Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02

by Jamaica Me Dead

  Alan ignored her.

  “I’m assuming he had business to attend to,” Alan said.

  “What kind of business, did he mention that?”

  “No, he didn’t say. Father really doesn’t discuss his business affairs with me.”

  “Nor his other affairs,” said Ali.

  Alan shot her a look.

  “Ali, please,” he said.

  “Please what? Keep quiet about him and the way he runs around? That’s what Mother did for all those years. And look where it got her.”

  Alan snapped shut his laptop and got up from the chair.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll work in my bedroom,” he told me. “I have a speech scheduled tomorrow in Falmouth. Will that be a problem?”

  I looked at Otee.

  “Can you go with him?”

  Otee nodded.

  “We’ll find someone else, too,” I said.

  “What about you?” Alan said.

  “I’m planning on heading back to Florida.”

  “Not for good, I hope.”

  “Remains to be seen,” I said.

  I told them about Monk’s memorial service. When I was done, Otee returned to the kitchen. Alan excused himself and stepped down the hall. Ali watched him go.

  “He’s in denial, always has been,” said Ali. “He thinks our father is some kind of saint.”

  She plopped down on a couch. I took a chair beside it.

  “Tell me about your mother,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t think of anything else to talk to you about. Because if I bring up your father or your brother I’m afraid you’ll bite my head off. Because I don’t want to talk about the weather. And because I’m trying to figure why you’ve got such a goddam chip on your shoulder.”

  Ali looked away. She curled her legs under her, ran a hand through her hair.

  “My parents were together for eighteen years, but came a point and she just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “Take what?”

  “Living here, the whole sordid scene. Father was much more a part of it all back then, mixing it up with the guests, carrying on just like they do. And when he wasn’t cavorting with Miss Flavor-of-the-Day he was off somewhere tending to business. Or so he said. Anyway, he was never around,” Ali said. “I think Mother just saw herself wilting on the vine.

  “When they finally decided to split up—Alan was seventeen, I was almost eleven—they gave us the choice of living with whichever one of them we wanted. Alan chose Father, god knows why, probably because he was already plotting his political career back then. And I chose Mother. The two of them stayed here; Mother and I went off to live in London. And my father has never forgiven me for it.”

  She got up from the couch, walked to a bamboo armoire, and pulled a framed photograph from a shelf. She handed it to me and sat back down again.

  “Taken shortly after they were married,” she said.

  It was an old Kodachrome and the colors had washed out, but the woman in the photo had a brilliance that years couldn’t fade. Dark skin, an easy smile, big sad eyes. She wore a long blue gown with rhinestones on the bodice, and she was vamping for the camera, one hand cocked on a hip, the other fanning out the edge of her gown.

  “She looks just like you,” I said.

  “Everyone says that.”

  “It’s true. She’s beautiful.”

  “The gown she’s wearing in the picture, she designed that,” said Ali.

  “So that’s where you get your talent.”

  “I’m nothing compared to her. She was amazing. Too bad she never decided to do anything with it until it was too late.”

  “What happened?”

  “You mean, how did she die?”

  I nodded. She took a deep breath, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “We were living in this tiny little flat, typical low-rent London because she refused to take anything from my father. Still, we were happy, you know? She was consumed with starting a career as a fashion designer, working insane hours, her sketches and fabric scattered everywhere. She knew lots of musicians—Father’s contacts in the recording industry did help on that front—and the musicians knew lots of models, so some of them were always dropping by and trying things on. That got her some notice, a story in the Times, another one in the Daily Mirror. She had just opened a shop in Mayfair and was planning a spring show,” said Ali. “Then one night she took a bunch of pills and didn’t wake up.”

  “Accidental?”

  “I doubt it,” Ali said. “I mean, I don’t know. It might have been. At first, I told myself that it had to be an accident, that she would never just choose to leave me. Then I convinced myself that she must have discovered she had cancer or something and didn’t want to suffer. Finally, I just accepted the fact that she wanted to die.”

  “So that’s when you decided to come back here to live with your father?”

  She shook her head.

  “I had no intention of coming back here. Ever. He came to London and got me.”

  “But that’s got to count for something,” I said. “Proof that he loves you.”

  “He really didn’t have a choice,” Ali said. “I was in jail.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Grand larceny. Drugs.” She paused. “Some other things, too.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “That was four years ago,” she said. “He brought me back here, built a little house for me, and let me be. Out of sight, out of mind. Might as well still be in London.”

  “If you’re so miserable, why don’t you just leave?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Ali said. “Monk and I had even made some plans. And then . . .”

  Ali stood from the couch, forced a smile as she walked away.

  “But now we’re all under one roof, living happily ever after, eh?” she said. “Some fairy tale.”

  43

  I spent the next hour on the phone at Darcy Whitehall’s house, trying to find a flight back to Florida. After much finagling, I finally snagged a standby seat on Air Jamaica that left the next day at noon, with an evening connection to Tampa. I’d worry about finding a return flight on the other end.

  The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. No bombs, no thugs with guns, nothing to spoil yet another gorgeous day in paradise. Alan stayed in his bedroom working. Ali stayed in her bedroom, doing whatever. And Darcy Whitehall stayed gone. There hadn’t even been a phone call from him.

  Otee brought me a copy of that morning’s Gleaner. A frontpage headline screamed: “Bloody Shoot-out Leaves Two Dead.”

  There was a photo of Alan Whitehall speaking at the co-op hall in Benton Town the day before. Another photo showed police unloading the two bodies from the white van at police headquarters.

  The police had done some legwork since we’d met with Eustace Dunwood. They now had identities on the dead men. They were brothers—Neville Andrews, 20, and James Andrews, 22, both of Montego Bay. The newspaper had managed to dig up mug shots of the two that must have been taken when both were still in school. Neither one of them looked any more than fourteen in the photos, smiling, fresh-faced kids wearing white shirts and black ties.

  The story quoted Eustace Dunwood as saying “while the suspects were wearing NPU colors, there is nothing at this time that connects them or their accomplice with the NPU.”

  That was followed by a quote from Kenya Oompong saying she did not know the dead men and suggested that the shooting was “part of an ongoing attempt by the People’s National Party to discredit our cause and garner sympathy for the sham candidacy of Alan Whitehall, who is nothing more than a fetch-boy for foreign interests and progeny of one of the most vile exploiters of the Jamaican people.”

  Woman had a way with words, had to give her that. I could almost hear Oompong’s thundering voice as she’d said it.

  The story didn’t identify Otee by name, saying only that “Whitehall’s personal bodygua
rd returned fire from the assailants, killing them.” It didn’t identify me either, except to say that “a second bodyguard, a U.S. security expert hired by Whitehall’s father, wealthy resort owner Darcy Whitehall, was also present at the altercation.”

  I put down the paper.

  Otee said, “Story called you a security expert.”

  “Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” I said. “Bet it’ll scare off anyone else who thinks about messing with us, huh?”

  “Shit,” said Otee. “Be no end to the people want to mess with us now.”

  “You worried about that?”

  “Be less worried if you worth a damn with a gun, mon.”

  In Darcy Whitehall’s absence, Otee and I decided it would be a good idea to meet with the resort’s executive staff—the general manager, the director of operations, and the director of guest relations—to map out a plan for making sure no one entered the resort grounds unless they were supposed to be there. We all sat down in the living room.

  “Should we advise the guests about what is going on?” the general manager asked.

  “What do they know already?” I said.

  “They’re oblivious,” said the director of guest relations. “Once they get here they couldn’t care less about anything that goes on outside the resort walls. I’d be willing to bet that most of them know nothing about the bomb at the airport, much less about the shoot-out yesterday.”

  Consensus was that the resort would carry on as if nothing had happened. The only option was to level with the guests and start handing out refunds. That would have been fine with me, but I thought that decision should come from Darcy Whitehall. Where the hell was he anyway?

  The chief of security, a heavyset former policeman named Glenroy Wilkes, said he’d need a dozen new hands in order to run full shifts around the clock, tighten the resort’s perimeter, and keep extra men on guard at Darcy Whitehall’s house. I told him to go ahead and hire them. And Otee said that as soon as the new guards arrived he would meet them at the main guardhouse to issue weapons.

  After everyone else left, I was sitting alone in the living room when Ali Whitehall came in.

  “I meant to ask earlier, but who was that man last night, the one who came to talk to you?” she said.

  “He works for the U.S. Embassy. Skingle’s his name. Why?”

  “I’ve seen him before,” she said. “With Monk.”

  “He told me he didn’t know Monk.”

  “Well, he’s lying then,” said Ali. “I saw them together a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Where?”

  “At this place, the Bird’s Nest, about halfway between here and Montego Bay,” she said. “My father was off-property for a few days, at one of the other resorts, and Monk and I had planned to spend the afternoon together at my place. I’d made him lunch and everything. But at the last moment he canceled on me, said something had come up and he couldn’t make it. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, and, well, I was suspicious.”

  “Why?”

  “I was jealous, you know? I thought he might be going to see another woman. Monk was a flirt. He was always hitting on women here at the resort, even after he and I hooked up. I knew he’d had a couple of flings with some of the girls on staff—one of the scuba instructors, a massage therapist at the spa—and I thought maybe he was up to something like that. He left in his car and I followed him. That guy was waiting for him in the parking lot. I saw them talking and then they walked inside together.”

  “You sure it was Skingle?”

  “Positive. He was all dressed up, just like he was last night,” she said. “What’s with that guy anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  But I was ready to find out.

  44

  “I checked with Mr. Skingle and I’m afraid he is tied up for the better part of the afternoon, Mr. Chasteen,” the secretary told me over the phone. “May I tell him what this is in reference to?”

  She had a lovely voice. Jamaican, very sing-songy. I’ve been known to fall in love with women based simply on the sound of their voices over a telephone.

  “Tell him it’s in a reference to a two-by-four.”

  “A two-by-four?”

  “Yes, the two-by-four that will be applied to the side of his head if he doesn’t make time for me.”

  Was threatening bodily harm to the assistant consul for Homeland Security a federal offense? Screw it.

  Besides, I thought I heard the secretary giggle before she put me on hold.

  When she came back on, she said: “How does five-thirty sound?”

  “Sounds like four and a half hours from now. Nothing sooner?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Then tell Mr. Skingle that I would be delighted to join him at five-thirty.”

  “Very good. I’ll put you down,” she said. “And, Mr. Chasteen?”

  “Yes?”

  “That two-by-four won’t be necessary.”

  “Fine,” I said. “But can I still bring along the ball peen hammer for his kneecaps?”

  This time she laughed. A lovely laugh. Oh, Zack, you charmer, you.

  I had an afternoon to kill. Otee and the security guards had things under control at Darcy Whitehall’s house, which was still minus Darcy Whitehall. No need for me to get in the way.

  What to do, what to do? Here I was, in the lap of sybaritic delight. So many seductive pleasures to choose from. A seaweed wrap at the Libido spa? Croquet-in-the-buff on the pool-side lawn? Bikram yoga in my birthday suit?

  I pulled Monk’s “Ideal Executive Daybook” out of the backpack and flipped the pages until I came to what I was looking for.

  ****K.O.****

  MARTHA BRAE

  1019 CHRIST CHURCH LANE

  The Mercedes was just sitting out there waiting for me. Nice afternoon for a drive.

  45

  On the road to Martha Brae, I got stuck behind a tour bus filled with would-be river rafters and had to put up the windows on the Mercedes to shut out the diesel fumes.

  It was slow going, but every now and then I got a glimpse of the Martha Brae River, its gray-green waters oozing between the muddy banks. A procession of bamboo rafts bobbed down the river, gondolas gone tropo, each carrying two passengers reclining in chairs, while a guide steered the course with a long bamboo pole. Not a rip-roaring Class 5 thrill ride by any means, but an easy-does-it way to fulfill the minimum daily vacation requirement for getting close to nature.

  The town of Martha Brae straddled the river. I found Christ Church easy enough, a stalwart Anglican fortress just off the market square, and followed Christ Church Lane a couple of blocks until I came to a cozy little white-frame house with a green slate roof and yellow trim. A picket fence enclosed the yard with an arbor gate bearing a homemade address marker announcing that it was 1019.

  OK, I’d found it, now what?

  I parked across the street, got out of the car, and walked toward the house. A giant mango tree stood on one side of the house, a breadfruit tree on the other, their branches touching in the middle and keeping the roof well shaded. A profusion of purple-flowered vines entwined the porch columns.

  A garage apartment sat behind the house, considerably newer than the main dwelling but painted to match it. No car in the garage.

  I was reaching for the gate when the dog lunged out from under the house, a big black and tan and snarling thing, some Jamaican riff on a Rottweiler. It leapt for the gate and I leapt back, a chain thwarting the beast’s intent just inches before it had me. The dog strained against the chain, standing on its back legs, quite nearly as tall as me, barking and slinging slobber.

  “Hesh up!”

  A woman stepped out of the house and onto the porch. She was an old woman, a big old woman, not fat so much as she was just plain massive. A bright blue dress went to her ankles, a white apron over the dress, white hair pulled tight to her head with a hairnet. She held a wooden cane in each hand, and she planted them in front
of her on the porch, propping herself up as she peered out toward the gate, squinting from the shade of the porch into the sun.

  The dog kept barking.

  “Hesh up!” the old woman yelled. “You done your job. Go on back. Go!”

  The dog gave me one last malevolent look, then returned to the cool dirt under the porch, sighing as it circled and lay down. The old woman kept squinting in my direction, looking from side to side.

  “Who you?” she said. “Talk at me!”

  “I’m Zack Chasteen, ma’am,” I said, and she zeroed in on me. Then her eyes wandered. She was blind.

  “You a white man?” she said.

  “Uh-huh. Yes, ma’am.”

  “What you want?”

  She had me there. I didn’t know what I wanted. And I was thinking I should maybe just slink quietly back to the car and drive away when she said: “You that same white man was out here before, snooping around?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “When was that?”

  “Few weeks back. I was off to church. One of the neighbors seen him. I told my daughter about it. She the one got me this dog.”

  “Some dog,” I said.

  “What you want?”

  I’ve always found that when dealing with old women, especially big old blind women with big mean dogs, honesty is the absolute best policy.

  “I’m trying to find who killed my friend,” I said.

  “What friend’s that?”

  So I told her the story about the bomb at the airport. She’d heard about it on television. And I told her about finding Monk’s daybook with her address in it.

  “Don’t know why my house would be in some dead white man’s book,” she said.

  “Neither do I, ma’am. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  She was looking straight at me now.

  “It hot out there?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s real hot.”

  “Well, come sit up in the shade of the porch,” she said.

  I reached for the gate. The dog growled.

  “Hesh up, Tiny,” the woman said.