by Dane Hartman
The room given Harry was small and dense with moisture that had seeped in from the bay. Particles of salt had encrusted on the small bureau which, aside from the bed and one chair, was the only piece of furniture in the place. There was one amenity and that was a small balcony that adjoined the room. Harry walked out onto it.
From where he stood, leaning against the rusted railing, he could see the jetty to which three sailboats and several motor launches were tied. Boys were running barefoot from one craft to the next, performing a variety of tasks to ensure that everything was seaworthy.
Now another boat, a sleek fiberglass model—a forty-footer it looked like from this distance—appeared on the horizon and with a sudden slowing of its motors, circled in toward the shore.
Harry watched as it docked and as its passengers, one by one, climbed out onto the jetty. There were a couple of splendid-looking women, gloriously tanned, the sort you see in magazine ads for cosmetics, toiletries, and cigarettes, full of the promise of romance in exchange for the purchase of some commodity or other.
But as arresting as these women were, it was the men that provoked Harry’s interest. Though they had come into port on a pleasure craft and though they were casually attired, in T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers, there was an air of enforced jollity about them. They were not men who could relax easily. Underneath their light jackets and secreted in the canvas bags they carried Harry was sure there were sidearms. He assumed that at any moment Braxton would be stepping out onto the jetty. Another man might remain secluded, fearful of exposure in light of the fact that he was being sought for murder and escape. But not Matt Braxton. For him, hiding would be an admission of cowardice and that was something even the bitterest opponent of the union president had never accused him of.
And sure enough, after another minute or two had passed, Braxton emerged from below deck, one arm lazily curled about the waist of a slender brunette who was in the process of adjusting her bikini top. Except for the color of her hair she could have passed as a duplicate of Darlene Farley.
His retinue protectively surrounding him, Braxton, with a sprightly step, started down the length of the jetty. Harry decided to see just where it was he was headed.
It did not take long to find out; Braxton and his crew had seated themselves in the Leeward Cay, a restaurant-café that looked out onto the shimmering water.
Harry, unobserved by anyone in Braxton’s party, took an inconspicuous position at the bar. There the bartender, a corpulent very swarthy man who hailed from Queens, of all places, told Harry that Braxton and his companions arrived every day at the Cay, and always at the same time: half-past five. Sometimes they would linger on for dinner or go up to the Whitby or else they would go back to Boca de la Sierpe. “He’s getting so bored with this ginmill,” the bartender said, “that he’s thinking of building another just so he’ll have somewhere new to go to.”
“And that’s what he does with his time?”
“Well, he’s still busy running his scams Stateside I hear. See that fellow over there? The one in the turtleneck with the earring in his ear? He’s new. Every afternoon it’s someone new. He comes in on the shuttle and soon as he turns up at Boca Braxton takes him out for a sail. I figure he’s given a broad for his trouble, too. They discuss a little business, then a day or two later, the guy flies out again.”
Harry recognized the man from the plane but made no acknowledgment of this.
The bartender was probably used to getting no response from his customers; he was a regular gossipmonger. “They say Braxton’s still pulling the strings up California way. These jokers who come in, they’re nothing but errand boys. Well-paid, but an errand boy’s an errand boy. Ask anyone.”
“What happens here at night?” Harry asked.
“Place called the Serendip. Another called the Mimoso. Both of them just installed discotheques to go with the casinos. It’s either one or the other. This ginmill, we close up half-past ten. Braxton and his crew will usually put in at the Serendip. Costs more. I don’t think old Matt likes the place, but these broads he’s got with and all these people coming down from the States, they’re looking for action. You know how it is?”
Harry had an idea how it was, and that evening he followed the Braxton party into the Serendip. It was a brightly lit, festively colored nightspot: lots of pretty women with necklines scooped halfway to their navels and obsequious waiters looking very uncomfortable in stiff red uniforms. There was a choice of losing your money at roulette, blackjack, or at the one-armed bandits. Drinks, invariably ingenious rum concoctions, cost what a native of Tapaquite made in a week. Only two couples occupied the small circular dance floor.
Twenty minutes had elapsed since Harry had entered the Serendip and now two men, one white, one black, approached the bar. Where they’d come from was hard to say. One minute they weren’t there, the next they were. With deceptive casualness they moved in on either side of Harry.
“Mr. Balsam,” the white began, “are you enjoying our little island?”
“We don’t usually get too many tourists this time of year,” the black added, flashing a smile.
“My travel agent doesn’t know any better,” Harry offered, all the while scanning the length of the room. While neither Braxton nor any of those with him seemed remotely interested in him, there were others, scattered at various tables, who had their eyes fixed on him. Even a few of the red-jacketed waiters, with their impassive and unreadable expressions, now appeared strangely menacing. It was very likely that no one would come to Harry’s aid if a fight broke out.
Under such circumstances it was always best, Harry knew, to take preemptive action, get a jump on the situation before the advantage totally slipped from one’s grasp.
“So tell us, Mr. Balsam, what does bring you to Tapaquite?” the white asked, clearly not caring what his answer would be.
“I like a place where the natives are friendly,” Harry replied, then took a step away from the bar. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”
The black gripped hold of one arm, the white of the other.
“Not going so soon?” said the black.
“And we were just getting to know one another,” his companion put in.
“Yeah, it’s a damn shame, isn’t it?”
The two men were trying to steer Harry out of the bar without attracting attention.
Harry allowed them to take him toward the exit, luring them into thinking they were in control. He then held back half a step and with expert skill, slid his right leg between the white’s, curling it sharply and hard around his left so as to knock him off-balance. As the white lurched forward, his hold on Harry loosened sufficiently for Harry to free his arm. Then with his elbow he struck out against the man’s back, propelling him forward. In the few seconds that it took to execute this attack, the man on Harry’s other side began to turn. But he was unprepared for Harry’s assault. No sooner had he tripped the white than Harry threw his entire weight behind a right hook directed at the black. The black dodged it but in doing so surrendered his hold on Harry’s arm.
Harry then brought up his left knee, smacking it ruthlessly into the black’s stomach, pitching him backward with such momentum that he landed clumsily on the tiled floor. The sound his skull made against the hard surface was ominously loud. By this time the white had recovered enough to face Harry again, this time with an elongated aluminum instrument in his hands. As Harry advanced toward him, the man, to his great surprise, drew the instrument up to his lips and aimed it at his chest. A blowgun. The last thing that Harry had expected. Such was his astonishment that he hardly had time to get out of the way of the steel dart.
The dart was four inches in length and had the capacity to penetrate through half an inch of plywood. There being no plywood in the vicinity, it thunked straight into the oaken panel of the bar directly behind Harry. Already a second dart had been thrust into the gun, preparatory to launch. The man was good; you had to give him that much. He was fast and good. It
occurred to Harry that the tips of the steel darts might be doused with some kind of drug, maybe with what they used to stun elephants and tigers.
When the second dart came toward him he simply ducked, scraping the floor with his knees. The dart continued on, catching by sheer accident the black who was just getting to his feet again. The dart hit him in his arm. He emitted a cry of pain, lurched crazily, and collapsed to the floor with more finality than he had the first time, confirming Harry’s guess that the darts were contaminated.
Stepping back, the white was in the process of reloading his weapon, evidently unconcerned that his comrade had become unwittingly his victim in place of Harry.
Harry ran headlong into him, like a linebacker for the Steelers, forcing him down. The dart gun got flung aside in the confusion, but the white still held onto one of the darts with which he attempted to stab Harry. Lunging out, he used the dart like a short dagger, indifferent as to where he cut Harry because it really didn’t matter so long as he could open skin and send the drug rushing into Harry’s bloodstream.
Harry heard his sleeve rip but the dart failed to penetrate any deeper; the man beneath him simply hadn’t the purchase necessary to drive it home with any force. Harry leapt up suddenly, but before his antagonist could take advantage of his unexpected freedom, Harry sent his heel down hard against the man’s right hand which contained the dart. The blow was of sufficient strength and his hand had been so positioned that Harry succeeded in breaking three of his fingers. The bones cracked audibly and were then slowly ground into a consistency that resembled a fine dust. The man’s face contorted with pain, and he shrieked loud enough to awaken all the dead of Tapaquite—and with Braxton’s presence on the island there were sure to be a lot of them.
The intensity of pain that shot up from his crushed hand was so great, in fact, that the white could concentrate on nothing else. Rather than try to get up and resume the confrontation, he merely released a hapless sigh, rolled over, and began to vomit.
It was only now that Harry had a chance to see how the Serendip’s clientele and staff had reacted to this unscheduled show. Not surprisingly, all eyes were focused on him. A pall of silence—but expectant silence all the same—had fallen over the room and even the ongoing blare of disco music could scarcely intrude upon it. The people who were giving him the most concerted stares were those who sat at Braxton’s table. But far from appearing distressed that their boys had come through this engagement so poorly they looked almost—well, pleased. Particularly Braxton. He was smiling. At first, Harry thought that his eyes had deceived him. Braxton smiling? Whatever for? He couldn’t possibly imagine.
Of course, they knew his identity. They might have known it ever since he got on the plane at Fort-de-France in Martinique. Then why should they resemble delighted children at Barnum & Bailey’s Circus?
At any rate, the Serendip’s management was not at all happy about this disruption. Bad for the Serendip’s reputation. The waiters though moved with incredible speed in removing the two luckless henchmen, both of whom were groaning at different volumes.
Those waiters who were not involved in the clean-up of bodies and vomit were now, at a respectable distance, forming a circle around Harry. An astonishing amount of hardware was suddenly produced from underneath their red jackets, small black handguns, nothing showy but effective nonetheless. Maybe, Harry thought, they were used to this sort of thing.
Harry saw the futility of resisting. He did not think that he would be shot right here, in full view of the clientele, even if Braxton supporters and hangers-on were in abundance. But being shot somewhere where it was dark, the alleyway outside, didn’t quite appeal to Harry either.
“I think, sir,” said the maitre d’, “I think you would be advised to go home and to make it a point not to return to the Serendip in the future.”
A reasonable man, Harry thought, all things considered.
“My sentiments exactly,” Harry said. Then, without looking back, he strolled to the door, not absolutely certain that one of these pistol-wielding waiters might not decide to shoot him just for the hell of it.
Now that his cover was blown Harry recognized the futility of his disguise and immediately dispensed with the wig which was, with the heavy island heat, pretty uncomfortable in any case. He ditched it in the bay and watched it sail languidly out to sea.
He figured it this way; if Braxton knows I’m here I might as well turn up every place he goes, haunt him like the ghost of Bernie Tuber; but he had to give Braxton the impression that it was not only he—Harry Callahan—stalking him but that he had backup assistance, undercover agents ready to jump in should he come to any harm. If Braxton was convinced he was acting alone, why then he would have no compunction about blowing him away and sending him floating after the wig he’d worn for the better part of the preceding day. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would scatter some cash about Ocho Rios’s unemployed, pay them to dog Braxton’s footsteps, put some fear into him. Not too much fear though; Harry didn’t want Braxton pulling out and setting himself up on some other unfortunate Caribbean island. If that happened he’d have to start all over again.
The lobby of the Crown Bay was deader than the parched, browning fronds of the potted palms that were set in its corners. The man at the desk had fallen asleep, his head buried in the middle of the huge black, half-empty register. A clock ticked noisily behind him indicating a time separated from the correct time by several hours. A bloated but very colorful waterbug of some sort traipsed across Harry’s path, undoubtedly on his way to join his family burrowed in the crumbling plaster walls.
Harry’s room was located on the third floor. The light grew dimmer and dimmer the higher you got. Either the bulbs had burned out and had not been replaced or else the sockets were empty, gaping holes that in the dark looked like open wounds.
In his flight down to the Caribbean Harry had not lost that sixth sense of his that warned him when something was not as it should be. Approaching his room, he muffled his footsteps, then stepping up to the door he put his ear to it and listened. He could hear nothing. But he was convinced that in his absence his room had been invaded.
Quietly he inserted his key in the door. Still locked. That didn’t matter. After the confrontation at the Serendip, he expected only further trouble. His .44 was out, gripped steadily in his hand. He turned the key and then threw the door open, at the same time drawing back out into the corridor so that if an intruder opened fire he would escape injury.
But no hail of bullets greeted him, only the darkness of the room. Cautiously, he reached in, snapped on the light.
He’d been right. There was someone there. A man he recognized from the boat and the Leeward Cay. But he had intentions other than ambushing Harry. Instead, he was sitting complacently in the room’s sole chair, his hands in full view so that Harry could see that he posed no threat to him. He was a rotund man with a pate gone bald underneath his hat. In the sweltering air sweat had begun to roll off his brow and he was now getting out a pink handkerchief to wipe it away.
That Harry kept the Magnum trained directly on him did not seem to either surprise or disconcert him. He probably expected it.
“You are a very careful man, Mr. Callahan. Or is it Balsam? It’s so hard to know what to call you. My name is Chauney. Dave Chauney. I am, as you are probably aware, an associate of Mr. Braxton.”
“Are you going to leave on your own or am I going to have to throw you out?”
“Please, Mr. Callahan. I have no doubt you could hurl me through this window before I knew what hit me, and I want to assure you I’m going to leave just as soon as I’ve delivered my message. I don’t particularly relish the idea of facing a .44 Magnum all night.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“Well, first, let me tell you Mr. Braxton was very impressed by your performance tonight.”
“Performance?”
“He was trying to convince his guests that you were probably the best officer on
the San Francisco police force. But to lay aside all doubts, he contrived a little demonstration. He would have been very disappointed if you had failed him.”
Now Harry understood why Braxton had appeared so pleased.
Chauney was quick to add that the two men who’d accosted him were not let in on the scenario. “That wouldn’t have been fair, would it?”
“That’s the thing I like about your employer,” Harry said. “His love of fairness.”
“Mr. Braxton has given you a lot of thought,” Chauney went on.
“I’m sure he has.”
“And he’s concluded that it makes no sense, the two of you being on opposite sides. He admires people who are resourceful and ambitious—and above all, successful.”
“No one likes a loser, is that it?”
“You see, Mr. Braxton thinks you have style. There aren’t many people in this world who have style.” Chauney, as he continued talking, was growing more expansive, no longer mindful of the gun Harry held on him. “He would like to make you an offer to come work for him. Not as a bodyguard. He has more bodyguards than he knows what to do with. Nor would he make such an offer to you. It would be an insult, he knows that. No, he would want you to organize operations in San Francisco for us.”
“What kind of operations are you talking about?” Harry shut the door to give them added privacy. He did not release his gun but he rested it. The best thing to do he decided was to draw this Chauney out as much as possible, pretend to be interested.
