There was one small drawback to his Rasta dinners, Umberto thought as a hiccup disrupted his fond remembrance of the meal.
They were often followed by a series of aggressive burps, particularly when beets were at the center of the plate.
Just another part of the purifying process, he concluded with an extra-long belch.
•
A HALF HOUR later, his meditations complete and the gazebo’s interior fogged with a distinct gaseous odor, Umberto began limbering up for his regular predawn yoga session.
Tossing his cropped T-shirt onto the floor, he assumed an upright stance in the center of the gazebo. Swooping his arms up over his head, he reached toward the rafters and breathed in a chest-swelling volume of early morning mist. He held the breath for as long as he could, before whooshing it out, dropping his hands to the floor as he expelled.
Crumpling into a crouched position, Umberto allowed his body a short minute of recuperation. Then he began again, his bony rear end slowly rising into the air. Arching his back, he lifted his chin upward and assumed a standard downward-facing dog position.
Focused on his straining muscles and the contortions of his spine, he transitioned into a state of extreme awareness. His senses were tuned in to every facet of his surroundings: the air, the sky, the sea, and . . .
Wait a minute. What was that?
•
UMBERTO COCKED HIS head to one side, the rest of his body remaining frozen in the awkward yoga pose. He stared up at the gazebo’s ceiling, trying to confirm the source of the odd shuffling sound that had disrupted his concentration.
Releasing his downward dog, he crawled across the floor to the gazebo’s south side and poked his nose over the railing. The sound continued as he peered through the darkness toward the wide sidewalk leading from the street to the fort’s main gate.
The mahogany trees growing along the cement walkway blocked his view, but Umberto was able to identify three distinct noises: a human’s labored breathing, the thump of plodding feet, and a long sliding grate.
He leaned farther out over the railing, trying to see into a clearing at the near end of the sidewalk where the streetlamp’s beam was unimpeded.
Suddenly, a hooded figure emerged from beneath the trees—a dark-skinned man carrying a log-shaped bundle over his shoulders.
Umberto ducked behind the gazebo wall. Heart racing, he listened as the man drew nearer. After a few steadying seconds, he summoned his courage and once more peeked over the railing.
Whatever was in the bundle, it must have been heavy. It seemed to take all of the man’s strength to move it forward.
Near the fort’s front gate, the path curved, and the man turned his back to the gazebo, giving Umberto a better look at his load.
The package was wrapped in a black tarp, obscuring the bulky contents trapped inside, but a hole had opened up near the bottom end. Something had fallen out and was dragging along the ground.
This was the source of the grating sound.
Umberto gasped as he identified the object.
It was a pale foot encased in a woman’s emerald-green high-heeled shoe.
~ 33 ~
The Captive
UMBERTO STARED OVER the gazebo railing, struggling to process what he had just seen.
As the hooded man lumbered up the concrete walkway leading to the Danish fort, the opera singer shook his head in confusion. He had to be mistaken. Surely the object poking out of the man’s pack wasn’t a human foot.
But as the shrouded figure hauled the lifeless human bundle up to the fort’s front gates, Umberto had a perfect view of the back side of the tarp.
The item dragging along the ground couldn’t be anything other than a leg attached to a woman’s green high-heeled shoe.
•
QUICKLY, UMBERTO TUGGED his T-shirt over his head and slipped on his tennis shoes. Hunching over, he sneaked down the gazebo steps and moved stealthily across the grass toward the fort.
A red-painted guard tower positioned outside the front gates provided convenient cover. Tucking himself behind the tower’s narrow cylinder, Umberto watched as the suspicious character shifted the human-sized bundle from his shoulders and dropped it onto the ground. After fishing a key from his pocket, the man unlocked the gates and heaved the package inside.
His concern mounting, Umberto glanced down the tree-lined walkway toward the King Street curve and the taxi stand at the far edge of the park. No one manned the station at this early hour. The drivers’ alley would be vacant until at least seven thirty.
He scanned the surrounding downtown area, his eyes passing over a darkened Lutheran church, rows of unlit commercial buildings, and a span of empty streets. The entire space was devoid of activity. Nothing stirred but the chickens, and they were unlikely to provide any meaningful assistance.
The eccentric opera singer, of slender build and slight physique, seemed an unlikely hero.
Umberto pressed his hands across his shoulder blades, taking courage from the fearsome images tattooed on the skin beneath his shirt. Then he stepped nervously from behind the guard tower and up to the front gates—intent on following the hooded man, his tarp-covered cargo, and the trailing woman’s shoe.
•
FLOODLIGHTS MOUNTED THROUGHOUT the fort lit up the recently renovated property, highlighting the yellow ochre walls, the dark green framing around the windows, and the white trim that detailed the numerous edges and railings.
The refurbishments were intended to restore the structure to its colonial-era condition, when St. Croix was at the heart of the Danish West Indies’ sugar enterprise.
The fort’s original construction began soon after the Danish government purchased the island from France. Built in the aftermath of St. John’s 1733 slave revolt on the ruins of an earlier French bunker, the Danish fort was designed to present a facade of overwhelming military strength and to provide the infrastructure to mete out discipline to the agricultural island’s growing slave population.
In order to dissuade aspiring rebel leaders from attempting to organize insurrections on St. Croix, punishments for even the slightest insubordination were swift and uncompromising. Anyone suspected of plotting rebellion was immediately brought to the fort for interrogation. The subsequent proceedings almost always resulted in the death of the accused.
The whipping post that had once stood outside the fort’s front gates was one of the few features that had been omitted by the renovation committee; its display had been deemed too gruesome for historical recreation.
Even without the pole’s grisly reminder, the place still evoked an eerie atmosphere, particularly when engulfed in predawn darkness.
As Umberto peeked timidly through the front gates, he couldn’t help but think that the scene was playing out like one of his operas: a location tainted by tragedy of epic proportions, a scoundrel intent on adding his misdeed to the blood-soiled ground, and a conflicted protagonist battling both the dastardly villain as well as his own cowardly demons.
He could almost hear the opening stanzas of a full-piece orchestra, musically narrating the story. His vocal cords pulsed, as if preparing to enter the full-throated chorus—only this time, he didn’t yet know how the song would end.
•
FROM THE GATED entrance, Umberto tracked the hooded man as he carried his load across the interior courtyard, which sloped upward to the fort’s main building.
Concrete walls rose fifteen feet from the courtyard’s yellow-brick floor; pointed iron stakes planted into the wall’s upper edge added an additional six inches to its height. The villain and his captive were completely concealed within the fort’s confines.
Umberto dithered at the gates, fearful of being discovered, but anxious to see more. He peered inside as the man lugged his bundle past a supply shed and a low-ceilinged bunker to a pyramid of concrete steps
. With effort, the dark-skinned figure heaved his human cargo up the flight of stairs to a white-painted archway leading into the main building. Dragging the bundle across the stone floor, he soon disappeared down a center hallway.
Umberto remained at the courtyard’s gated entrance, weighing his options. Much as he wanted to return to the safety of his boat, he couldn’t bear to leave. Intrigue had begun to outweigh caution. This was, far and away, the most fascinating sequence of events he had ever observed on the Christiansted shoreline.
Slowly Umberto sneaked across the courtyard. Should the man up ahead turn and look back, the opera singer was fully exposed; the floodlights illuminating the area left him nowhere to hide.
But with every step, the musical background playing in his head grew in complexity and volume. As Umberto reached the main building and mounted the stairs to the central arched hallway, he was now firmly committed to his role.
Adrenaline coursing through his veins, he stepped from the audience and into the play itself.
•
MOMENTS LATER, UMBERTO stood in the arched foyer, peering down the unlit central corridor. The shadowed walkway was empty; the hooded man had already taken his human bundle farther inside the fort.
Beyond the foyer, the hallway opened up to a second, much larger courtyard, this one flat and rectangular in shape. The area was covered in a thick layer of grass, cut short and closely groomed to mimic the fort’s once-military precision.
Cannonballs were stacked into two cone-shaped piles against the far wall in front of an ammunitions storage unit. Ten feet above, a colonnade held a row of colonial-era cannons. The machines’ stubby metal cylinders were pointed out into the harbor, aimed toward the reef. Historically, the reef’s natural barrier had proven to be a far more formidable threat to incoming vessels than the line of artillery, which over the course of the last three centuries had never once been fired.
•
AFTER A QUICK glance through the corridor to the enclosed yard, Umberto shifted his attention to the building’s tunneled interior. Hallways branched off on either side, following the line of the fort’s main walls.
Minimal lighting had been wired inside the structure, and the spotlights on the roof cast only angled shadows across the brick flooring. As Umberto ventured down the left-hand hallway, he waved his hands in front of his body, seeking to guide his way forward.
He took a few steps before his fingers brushed against the wooden door to a holding cell. Similar cramped compartments were scattered throughout the fort and honeycombed down into the basement. Any available space that might have been used to store provisions or prisoners had been configured into the layout.
The fort provided countless places to dump a body—or, Umberto realized, pulling his arms toward his chest—to lie in wait for a second attack.
It was as he stood there, nervously gripping his waist, that a sliding bump broke through the darkness.
•
THE HERO NEARLY abandoned his quest right then and there. His courage departed, leaving him weak-kneed and shaking. It took every ounce of Dante-inspired bravado to keep him from fleeing the building.
But after a steadying gulp and a renewed commitment to the opera music playing in his head, Umberto plastered his back to the wall and slowly inched down the hallway toward the source of the sound.
Carefully lifting one sneakered foot over the other, he gradually made his way to the corner of the building. He paused in a dark recess, waiting for another clue to the perpetrator’s location.
Suddenly, the hooded figure moved into a patch of light, lugging his bundle toward an opening in the floor.
Umberto hardly dared to breathe; his face paled with anxiety. Wincing, he waited for an inevitable confrontation, but the villain appeared not to notice his presence.
The hooded man dropped his bundle to the ground and loosened the top portion of the tarp. Reaching inside the newly created hole, he pulled out the victim’s limp hand and slung it and the attached arm over his shoulder. With a loud grunt, the man eased the dead weight down a narrow flight of stairs. Accompanied by several loud bumps and shoves, he moved into the lower basement level.
Straining his neck, Umberto looked down over the top of the steps to a small landing in the basement below. He watched as the man wrenched open an iron door and pushed his prisoner inside.
After a short pause, the hooded man returned to the stairwell, this time carrying an empty tarp loosely folded over his right arm. As he began climbing the steps to the fort’s main level, Umberto dove into the nearest holding cell.
Yawning sleepily and moving with far greater ease now that he had been relieved of his human cargo, the man rapidly traversed the hallway to the main entrance.
Seconds later, he slipped out the front gates and vanished into the night.
•
UMBERTO LAY ON the dusty floor of the holding cell until he was sure the man had gone. Slowly picking himself up, he cautiously stepped back into the hallway.
He stood there for several minutes, horrified both at what he had just witnessed and his own fear-driven inability to intervene. Even now, he was struggling to work up the nerve to see the corpse that had been left in the basement below.
Draining his last reserves of musical inspiration, Umberto crept toward the opening in the floor that led down to the lower level. No more than a foot and a half wide, the stairwell was a tight fit, even for his slender build. The concrete steps had seen hundreds of years of use; the edges had been worn down to slick, dipping curves.
The small square of space at the bottom of the stairs was pitch-black, but the metal door that the hooded man had passed through creaked open under Umberto’s touch. Ducking his head, he climbed over a rimmed threshold and into the basement’s main prison chamber.
The ceiling was low, only half a man’s height, so Umberto had to stoop as he entered. A rectangular-shaped window fitted with bars had been built into the upper portion of the near wall, providing a foot-level view of the front courtyard. A harsh beam from one of the fort’s floodlights cut through the window, illuminating a human form slumped on the ground in the middle of the room.
The figure was turned on its side, facing away from the door. Freed from the tarp covering, the rest of the body’s clothing was now visible. In addition to the high-heeled shoes, Umberto could make out a sleeveless green dress that ran from the shoulders to the knees. A mass of curly brown hair spilled out from the back of the head and spread across the concrete.
Umberto knelt to the floor, his internal opera transitioning to a sad, poetic refrain. The closing stanza took up a moving funeral dirge, with string instruments striking a somber mood.
His fingers trembling, he reached for the figure’s stiff shoulder and rolled it onto its back—revealing an image that caused the music to terminate in the violent screech of a violin that had snapped a string.
“Oh,” Umberto uttered with surprise, his face registering confusion. Stroking his chin, he leaned in for a closer look.
“Hmm.”
• • •
GEDDA STOOD ON the fort’s upper colonnade, above the inner courtyard, as the dawn’s early half light broke over the harbor. The sun’s first rays glanced across the water, casting her crippled profile in a stark shadow against the glowing sky.
She’d held this position throughout the early morning epic. The elevated colonnade had given her a perfect view of the fort’s front walkway, while the windows lining the inner hallway had provided enough glimpses to allow her to follow the action taking place in the fort’s interior.
She now watched, her yellow eyes gleaming with delight, as the slender opera singer hefted a short unconscious man in a green dress and matching high heels out of the basement dungeon. The curious duo stumbled along the hallway to the main corridor, down the front steps, across the courtyard, and out the front gat
es.
Tilting her head back, Gedda let loose a hoarse cackle.
“Char-lee Bak-er,” she whispered with a shake of her head. “San-ta Cruz got you again.”
~ 34 ~
The Knockoff
CHARLIE BAKER BLINKED as the white fog of the last sixteen hours began to lift, and he returned to the blurry edge of consciousness.
He felt a slight swaying beneath his back and shoulders. Above him, morning light soaked through a row of oval-shaped windows. As the soft rays warmed his cheeks, a gentle lapping caressed the wooden sides of the boat where he lay. In the distance, a rooster cadoodled out a wakeup call.
Yawning himself awake, he opened his eyes to a painful, yet familiar, throbbing on the back of his head.
Massaging his aching skull, he raised himself up onto his elbows and groggily surveyed his surroundings.
He was sprawled on a bench that had been built into one of the boat’s inner walls. It was a small vessel, but functional. There was more than enough room for a man to sustain himself while at sea.
Charlie let out a queasy groan. He desperately hoped this boat was not afloat somewhere out in the Caribbean. Please let me be docked in the Christiansted harbor, he silently pleaded.
A framed newspaper clipping hung on the wall above his bed. The story featured a Boston opera performance by an Italian man in a tuxedo with a top hat and tails. Although Charlie had never once set foot inside an opera house nor listened to classical music, the man’s face looked vaguely familiar.
A ceramic coffee cup clinked in its saucer, drawing his attention to the boat’s kitchen area a few feet away.
Charlie rotated his head to look at a skinny man in running shorts and cutoff T-shirt sitting on a chair by the sink. A pair of wiener dogs with short stubby legs lay on the floor nearby.
“Café?” Umberto asked cordially, raising his cup.
“Yep. That should help,” Charlie grunted as he dragged himself into a fully upright position.
Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands) Page 12
