by Lou Cameron
Captain Gringo nodded and replied, “We got shot at the last time we were here. This is the first time I’ve ever been to the Royal Yacht Club. Guys in my line of work generally hide out in darker corners.”
Carmichael said, “I agree Boggs is a bloody ass. What are we going to do about it, Walker?”
“Beats the shit out of me. This is sort of a public place to stage a mutiny. That gray lump over to the south isn’t a whale gazing at the moon. It’s a Royal Navy torpedo rams I noticed it the last time we were here.”
Carmichael nodded and said, “Mutiny is out of the question, even if it were possible. But there must be a telegraph office here in Corozal, and you seem to have some influence with Mr. Greystoke.”
“Not that much. You were there when I told him I thought the whole plan was for the birds. Did he listen? Greystoke picked Boggs to sail us to wherever. So he’d be admitting a mistake if he fired Boggs. I’ve never heard Greystoke admit he wasn’t beautiful, let alone admit a mistake. How do you guys feel about desertion?”
“Desertion? You can’t be serious! That’s as bad as mutiny!”
“I thought you’d say that. Look, guys, I don’t know what you and the others can do, legally.”
“What are you and Verrier going to do, Walker?”
“We’re still thinking about it,” the tall American replied, moving away as he added. “You’re spinning your wheels on the track, Carmichael. In a situation like this, it’s best not to stand around plotting unless somebody has a sensible plot. There’s always a captain’s pet in every crew, and it’s dumb to have the name without the game.”
He moved along the seaward rail, as if it mattered whether anyone was watching from shore at this range. He spotted Gaston lounging amidships against the cabin works. As he moved to join him, Gaston put a finger to his lips and pointed at a familiar ventilator.
Captain Gringo nodded and hooked his rump over the low rooftop to listen, too, as Phoebe’s voice said hollowly, “I was so surprised I nearly farted on the poor dear’s balls!”
Captain Gringo knew they were talking about him when Flora Manson answered wearily, “Good God, Phoebe, don’t you ever think about anything but sex? I told you I wasn’t interested in your manic career as this century’s answer to Cleopatra. Why can’t you just fornicate to your heart’s content and keep it to yourself?”
“Pooh, I keep an awful lot of things I do to myself. But this afternoon was so bloody unusual. You’ll never believe what he did to me, Flora!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you know I used to be married, Phoebe. What on earth can any man do that every married woman hasn’t tried at least once?”
“He made me come! Can you believe that?”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then Flora said, “Oh? I’m missing something, Phoebe. What’s so bloody unusual about that? Isn’t that what one sneaks about in kimonos to accomplish, as a rule?”
“Well, God knows I’ve tried to come often enough, Flora. But this afternoon was the first time I ever managed. And I came twice!”
Another silence, followed by, “I suspected that might have been why you acted so man-hungry. All right, welcome to the club. Obviously Captain Gringo knows his business, and I’m happy for you. Can we get some sleep now? Captain Boggs says he means to bury that poor lad at dawn, and it’s getting late.”
There was another interval of silence, so Captain Gringo nudged Gaston and motioned him away. But Gaston shook his head and whispered, “I find this trés intrigue, you devil!”
Captain Gringo muttered a curse and lit a smoke in time to hear Phoebe say, “I do feel ever so much more relaxed tonight. But I wish he was here right now to put me to sleep proper with his great dong.”
Flora snapped, “Will you shut up, you silly little slut!”
“What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong, dear?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, go to sleep.”
There was a longer-than-ever lull. Captain Gringo whispered, “Can we go now? I want to talk to you.”
Gaston shook his head and in a little while they heard Phoebe giggle and say, “Oh, I know why you’re so cross with me. You haven’t come in ages and you don’t feel as comfy as me, eh what?”
Flora’s voice dripped honey and venom as she said, “To feel like you I’d doubtless have to scoop out my brains and toss them away. But, for the record, it’s not polite to prattle on about one’s sex life to someone who doesn’t have one.”
“Oh, are you hard up, Flora? Why don’t I fix it up for you to get to come too? Dick says he shares that state room with that nice little French chap, and—”
“Now you’re really starting to disgust me, Phoebe! In the first place, I don’t want to have an affair with anyone, but, if I did, M’sieur Verrier is old enough to be my father!”
“Well, he’s sort of cute, though. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I fix it up so that you can sleep with Dick and I can try my newfound interests with Gaston? I wonder if it’s true what they say about Frenchmen. Now that I know what it feels like to come, the idea of a tongue down there just makes me shiver all over!”
They heard a strangled curse and the slamming of a cabin door. Captain Gringo bodily pulled Gaston away as he said, “Come on. She may come on deck to cool off, and that Phoebe never shuts up, even when she’s alone.” As he led Gaston forward, the Frenchman laughed and said, “I tingle, too. You seem to have created a monster, Dick. But I admire her sense of adventure very much.”
“You can have her. Kiss it once for me for old times’ sake. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Take a gander at that other schooner, moored out in the roads to the northeast.”
Gaston followed his gaze and stared for a time at the dim outlines of a nondescript coastal schooner, blacked out and silent at anchor. Gaston shrugged and said, “Eh bien, it is a boat. So what?”
“I think it could be the Nombre Nada. Remember her?”
“Mais, oui, we are discussing the gunrunner owned by that rather ferocious Esperanza, who also admired your great dong so much, non?”
“Old Esperanza and I get along okay. That’s not the point. Finding a dame in Corozal Isn’t much of a problem. Finding a dame with a seagoing schooner is the problem. If that schooner is the Nombre Nada, things are looking up, old buddy! Esperanza owes me. I did more than make her come the last time we met. I saved her life and schooner, remember?”
“Ah, I follow your drift, as les cowboys say. But how are we to know that is the Nombre Nada over there, and, more important, how are we to get aboard, unseen, if she is?”
“I’m still working on that. The first thing we have to find out is if Esperanza is in town and where her next port of call might be. I’m tired of jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and Esperanza runs guns to some weird places for a living.”
Gaston placed a forefinger against his nose and said, “You stay here. A big blond moose like you attracts attention, even in a British tropic port. I, sneaky Gaston, shall slip ashore and make discreet inquiries among the rogues of Corozal.” He looked wistfully back at the vent they’d left and added, “I may have to search out a lady rogue as well. That mad little English girl has given me an astounding erection for a man my age.”
*
Gaston got back before midnight, which surprised Captain Gringo almost as much as it did Gaston. They met near the gangplank. Gaston asked, “Sacre bleu, what are you doing with your pants on at this hour, standing guard on this trés fatigue deck?”
Captain Gringo said, “I’m not. There’s a lime juicer on watch in the cockpit. I was waiting for Boggs to get back. I wasn’t expecting you before morning.”
“Neither was I, alas. But all the rogues I was able to contact turned out to be male rogues. Do you remember that retired daughter of joy I spent some time with the last time we were here? They tell me she has been deported by the spoilsport constabulary, just for stabbing an annoying guest. Corozal used to be a more interesting port of call, but—
”
“Never mind all that. What did you find out about that blacked-out schooner over there?”
“She is still the Nombre Nada to the extent that she has no known name to anyone I met on the beach. Whether she is Esperanza’s Nombre Nada or not is another matter. Nobody seems to know who is aboard or what they are up to in Corozal. Frankly, that sounds like Esperanza to me. She is a rogue after my own heart, even though she seems to prefer you in bed. If that mystery schooner was not a gunrunner, she would not be keeping her business here so quiet, non? After all, the rogues on shore know all about this vessel and it’s crew.”
Captain Gringo blinked and said, “Run that by me again. Are you saying our cover’s been blown?”
“But of course. What did you expect would happen when that species of idiot, Boggs, went ashore to ask directions to an Anglican High Church chapel where he could hold a funeral for a crew member killed by gunfire? Naturally, the tavern gossips do not have the whole story in detail. But they know Flamenco Lass is on some sort of mission of derring-do for the British government. You were right that the enlisted men aboard that customs craft would comment over supper about our mysterious immunity from standard procedure, and anyone with the brain of a flea can put two and two together, hein?”
Captain Gringo muttered, “Shit. Okay, what I figured would happen has happened, and a knock-around guy has to roll with the punches.”
“Can we desert now, Dick?”
“No. We’re safer here than anywhere J can think of for the moment. Boggs won’t want to shove off for at least eight or nine hours. Come daybreak, we can see if we can find out how many old pals we may have here in port. Why don’t you turn in? I’ll wait here for Boggs. I know it’s a waste of time, but I still want to tell him he’s an asshole.”
Gaston laughed and went below. Captain Gringo finished his smoke, decided not to light another just yet, and paced the deck as he waited for Boggs to return. It was a long wait and he was getting bored. But he didn’t go back to the cockpit to chat with the deck watch. The sailor was a morose Welshman named Rice, who answered in sullen grunts, and the Yank wasn’t interested in what was eating him.
Boggs finally arrived at about quarter to one. He seemed pleased with himself as he told Captain Gringo that the funeral was set for nine o’clock that morning and added, ‘‘Entire ship’s complement to be present and suitably dressed, of course.”
Captain Gringo said, “Bad move. Any kind of funeral is going to attract more attention than we really need. Follow the pall with men in uniform and two white women gussied to the nines and we’ll make the front page of the local newspaper. Besides, at least half of us should stay aboard to guard the vessel.”
“Nonsense. What could happen to it here in the yacht-club basin? I’ll leave a skeleton crew aboard, of course. That’s regulation.”
“Good. Gaston and I volunteer to stay here. Neither of us owns a necktie, and I’d feel silly as hell if somebody stole my weapons.”
Bogg answered with a shrug that probably meant yes. So Captain Gringo pressed his luck and added, “I’d like the use of your captain’s gig, as soon as the sun comes up, to shed more light on the subject. I want to go over and have a closer look at another tub in the harbor.”
“We’re not supposed to communicate with anyone else about our mission, Walker.”
Captain Gringo swallowed what he was hurting to point out and contented himself with explaining, in a reasonable tone, “The people I’m hoping to meet are sort of in the same trade, as freelancers, of course. I can vouch for them as knock-around types who stay bought. I worked with them in the past on another mission, and they owe me.”
“Oh? Was it a mission for the British government?”
“No. Just gun-for-hire stuff. But old Esperanza and her crew could come in handy if I could get them to join forces with us. They know every pirate cove and corrupt official on the Mosquito Coast.”
Boggs shook his head and said, “Out of the question. Whitehall would never approve of our enlisting amateurs.”
“Jesus H. Christ! You call Esperanza and her gunrunners amateurs? They’re professional sneaks, hard as nails, and, like I said, they know this coast better than you, me, Greystoke, and even Gaston put together!”
Boggs shook his head again and said, “They’re still amateurs, or, if you wish, irregulars, as far as Whitehall is concerned. I don’t want to talk to them, and I don’t want you to talk to them. Will that be all? I’d like to go to my quarters, if you don’t mind.”
Captain Gringo wished him pleasant dreams about the bunny rabbits and, since Boggs was turning in, decided to do the same.
He went below and opened the door to the stateroom he shared with Gaston. Gaston was not alone. Phoebe Chester gleeped, “Oh, dear!” as Captain Gringo entered. She had a right to feel embarrassed. She was reclining, naked, on Gaston’s bunk. Gaston should have felt embarrassed, too, but he just went on eating her between the legs. So Captain Gringo muttered, “Sorry,” and stepped over to his own bunk to scoop up his mattress and bedding.
As he turned to go, Phoebe giggled and said, “Don’t leave, Dick. I know this may look naughty, but I like you both, and if you’d like to stay and have a part …”
He didn’t answer. He just closed the door softly behind him. He was maybe a little pissed, but a wise older woman had once told him that no parting words topped gently closing the door behind you as you simply left, and he’d found that to be, if not true, a lot less effort than any other parting shots one could come up with on short notice.
He grumped his way back up on deck and moved forward. That flat expanse up in the bows offered as good a place as any to spread his bedding and kip out. It didn’t look like rain, and the night air tasted fresher in the open, anyway.
When he got up in the bows, he discovered that someone else had already had the same idea. Flora Manson gasped and asked, “What are you doing here?” as she rose on one elbow under her sheet and thin coverlet. In the moonlight he could see she was in her black lace nightgown, and that looked sort of thin, too.
He began to spread his own bedding a foot or more from Flora’s as he explained, “My stateroom’s a bit crowded as well as stuffy at the moment. Mind if I join you?”
“I certainly do! You can’t sleep with me, you idiot!”
“Hey, there’s sleeping with and then there’s sleeping beside, right? Look, I know you were here first, but I have no choice. I’ve got no place else to kip out. What’s the matter with your own stateroom, if you don’t trust me? I happened to know it’s empty right now.”
As he sat down and took off his gun rig and boots, intending to leave the rest of his duds on, for now, Flora frowned and said, “I know my stateroom is empty. My roommate told me she was on her way to yours.”
He laughed and said, “She told you true. That’s why I came up here.” Then he got under his own covers, lay back, and added, “Pleasant dreams.”
There was an interval of silence as they lay side by side, staring up at the tropic stars through the rigging. Then Flora sat up again and said, “This is all very confusing. What on earth is Phoebe doing in your bunk if you’re up here with me?”
He chuckled and said, “She wasn’t in my bunk, last time I looked. I’m too much a gent to tell you what she was doing. But it seemed to be a private matter, so I thought I’d better leave.”
“Oh, my God, not Phoebe and that dirty old man!”
“I didn’t notice how dirty anybody was. The light was sort of dim. But let’s not be calling my pal names, eh? He may be older than you and me, but he’s not doing anything to Phoebe that Phoebe doesn’t want him to.”
Flora grimaced and said, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have made that uncalled-for remark about your friend. I know what you men are like, and Phoebe seems a perfect perishing little slut!”
He shrugged and opined, “That’s her business, not ours. I don’t like to hang labels on people. What people might or might not be depends on w
ho’s looking at them. To a nun, a respectable married woman may appear sexually depraved. A salmon swimming up a river would probably think all of us were acting silly, if a salmon knew how we spawned.”
Flora laughed despite herself and said, “What a grotesque idea! How on earth can you even guess what a salmon feels about, ah, country matters?”
“I can’t I’ve never been a salmon. I know his sex life seems a little weird to me. But, like I said, it’s all in one’s point of view. As long as other people aren’t trying to make you do something you don’t want to, I figure they have a right to their own opinions. Can we drop it? I’m trying to be a. gent, but I’m not used to discussing sex with beautiful women at bedtime, unless I know them pretty well.”
They both fell silent again. It wasn’t easy. Despite himself, Captain Gringo was aware that there was a lush brunette, naked under black lace, less than a yard away, and how in hell was he supposed to fall asleep with an erection like this?
Flora must have had feelings, too, although she had a piss-poor way of coping with them. She suddenly blurted, “Do you really think I’m pretty?”
“I didn’t say you were pretty. I said you were beautiful. Now, if you don’t want me to do anything about it, go to sleep, for chrissake!”
She didn’t. She asked, “Did you enjoy making love to Phoebe?”
He sighed and said, “That’s a stupid question. You know that if I had, I wouldn’t tell you. A gent’s not supposed to kiss and tell.”
She repressed a laugh and said, “You don’t have to. Phoebe already told me you did much more than kiss her.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to let her know he’d been listening in on the conversation. He also knew there were times when silence was golden. He was hoping like hell that this was one of them. Damn, those tits looked nice in the moonlight under black lace!
She tried to hold out, too. Then she tried, “Do you mean to tell me Phoebe just made that up about you making her, ah, you know?”
“How the hell should I know anything, if she made it up?”
“Something must have happened. She came back from your stateroom absolutely radiant.”
