As we walked, I pointed to a section of sugarcane that was scrawnier and paler than the tall, green stalks they should have been.
“You’ve got too much water. The water table’s too high. You need ditches to draw off some of it.”
“Yes, my husband used to do that with some of the fields, I remember him talking about too much water in some places, not enough in other places. You understand, I have little interest in the farm. My family says I should sell it and move back with them on the south coast, but I have been here for over half of my life. Besides, the weather is hotter there.” She smiled. “The mosquitoes are bigger there, too.”
“It’s going to take a bit of work, getting the place operating again as it should. I’d be willing to manage it for you for a percentage of the harvest.”
“Yes, that would be fine, but why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to do it?”
I stopped and faced her. “That’s a strange question. I’m an experienced sugarcane field manager, I’m out of a job.” I shrugged. “Why not?”
She stared at me, her eyes examining me. “You are a very young man, but you have old eyes.”
“I’m getting wrinkles?”
“No wrinkles. Your face is young, and perhaps to some women you would be called handsome.”
“Thanks.”
“But your eyes are old. My husband’s eyes were that way, even when his face was young. He had seen much in life, did much, and it aged his soul while his face remained young.”
“You know I’m not British, not really.”
“Yes, Russian, they say, but I don’t know anything about your people. Suez says they are cruel, violent and dangerous, but that you’re more English than Russian. I don’t know about your people, but I do know that even though you are still young, you have been involved in many things. So I ask you again. Why do you come to me and offer to help run my small, poor farm? You can make more money smuggling Indian curios, can you not?”
“Christ, you are a witch. Did your husband ever get away with lying to you?”
“My husband lied to me only once. And I told him that if he did it again, I would cut off something that was lower than his nose.”
This was not a woman I wanted to screw—financially, at least. There was a mystic quality about her, a spiritualism that supported the allegations that she was a witch, but there was also a toughness. Mr. Garcia had no doubt walked the line when it came to her.
I steered her toward an old tin barn.
“That was your husband’s distillery, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
We pulled open the tall double doors at both ends to let in light and air. Holes in the ceiling let in sunlight and no doubt plenty of rain. I walked around the vats and condenser pipes. Everything seemed to still be in place. Some pipes were rusty, but the vats themselves were not. They appeared to be made of a high quality metal, certainly better than the battered old pots cane workers used in their bush-rum stills.
“It looks like it’s all still together. Probably usable?” I asked.
“With some work, yes.”
I was certain I could get Suez to help me get the equipment running. It was far less complicated than the sugarcane machinery. There were few moving parts, mostly just copper tanks, piping and burners.
“You know a little about distilling rum,” she said.
“Not really.”
She gave me a curious look. “I’ve heard that you invested in a bush-rum distillery with Samuel, Walsh’s foreman. Been selling the moonshine to bars in Corozal and Orange Walk.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
“To see how big a lie you would tell.”
I cleared my throat. Bloody damn witch. “All right, I know a little about distilling. But this is a professional operation. And I promise not to lie to you—if you promise not to read my mind anymore.”
She smiled as she waved at the equipment. “Garcia tried to produce rum with a forty-five percent alcohol content, but often it was higher. There are three processes to distilling. Fermented molasses and water is heated in the still.” She pointed at a boiler tank. “We use bagasse to boil the liquid, just as you do at the sugarcane plant. The boiling turns the liquid into vapor, it goes through the condenser…”
“The boiling is done at precise temperatures to increase the alcohol content, I know.”
I also knew that molasses was allowed to ferment to increase its alcohol content before it was distilled to increase the alcohol percentage. Rum with a forty-five percent alcohol level, called “ninety proof” in some countries, was pretty average.
“I’ve heard that your late husband’s rums were extremely good.”
“He called his original rums kill-devil after a rum made by slaves in the early days of sugarcane production in the West Indies. It was not high quality, but I worked with him on giving it good taste. Good rums are like good whiskeys or any other fine liquor—they are aged and blended. Garcia was an impatient man—his rums came out of the distillery and into the bottle, sometimes with a high enough alcohol content that you could burn swamps with them.”
“That was back during American Prohibition, wasn’t it, the 1920s.”
“Up to 1933, that’s when the Americans legalized alcohol again.”
“It wasn’t profitable to operate the distillery after that?”
“The colony is a very poor place, poor even in comparison to its neighbors and the Caribbean islands we are most culturally connected with.” She shrugged. “Half the rum consumed is made by bush distilleries. And in those days, when my husband was alive, the colonial administrator was a teetotaler who discouraged rum production; he thought demon rum was bad for the ‘natives.’”
I laughed with her. I had a simple solution for uptight guys like the late administrator—getting laid. There was nothing like a good fuck to relax a man and soften his worldview about liquor and lust.
“Yes,” she smiled, “I saw his wife once. Both of them looked like they wore pajamas to bed. In the tropics.”
Christ. The woman was a mind reader.
“It’s too bad, though, that Garcia didn’t try to stay in the legitimate end of the business. Our brew had obtained a good reputation as a moonshine. I always thought we should have sold it as a premium rum rather than just bootleg, but Garcia was as much of a criminal as a businessman.” She smiled. “You remind me of him, his business methods.”
I took that to be a compliment—of sorts. I thought it was odd that she referred to her husband by his last name.
“So that is why you want to work my sugarcane,” she said, “you want to distill rum.”
“I understand that the colonial administration is now more worried about unemployment than drunkenness and it’s easier to get a distillery license.”
“True, true, but why does the colony need another distillery? The ones that are already here make little money.”
“I was more interested in export,” I said.
“Export? You think colony rum could compete against the fine rums made in Barbados, Puerto Rico, Jamaica? Those rums are aged for years, sometimes up to ten years, often in expensive oak barrels. Even after that, they’re blended with other rums to make a fine product. This little distillery turns out poor quality rum, that’s all. It would cost a great deal of money to turn it into a distillery that could compete with them. Most of the rum distribution is controlled by the West Indies cartel, so you’re not even competing against individual brands, but by a cartel as powerful as some small countries.”
“I don’t plan on competing with anyone. Your husband successfully turned out a product—”
“During the American Prohibition, a time when people would have drunk toilet water if you told them it was ninety proof. And it was perfectly illegal. Garcia was a better business person than me. I thought our rum was good and should be sold legitimately, but he knew how difficult it would
have been to break into the market, that’s why he stayed with bootlegging and went into another business after the moonshine business dried up.”
“Well, I plan to be perfectly illegal, too.” I grinned at her. “Besides, I plan to make vodka.”
I finally got a surprised look from her. I might as well have told her I planned to distill petrol.
“Vodka? What is that?”
“A liquor you don’t find in places like British Honduras, or even Mexico or the Caribbean. It’s big in some parts of Europe, Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, Poland, Sweden—it’s even getting popular in the States.”
“What does it taste like?”
“The best vodka has no taste. It’s clear, tasteless and odorless.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Who would want to pay for a drink that has no taste or smell?”
“Millions of people, actually. Vodka is popular straight, what the British call ‘neat.’ But like Mexican tequila and some rums, it can also be used as a base liquor, meaning that it’s used as the alcoholic base for mixed drinks.”
She shook her head. “This is a poor colony—”
“No, actually I’m not talking about selling it in the colony, not in any significant quantity. I have a contact in the States, in a city called Boston, north of New York. The man’s an antique dealer, but his family’s in the liquor business. If I can make vodka, bottle it and give it labels that claim it’s made in Moscow, he can distribute it in the States.”
“I see, it’s another form of bootlegging.”
I grinned. “You can call it that.”
“What do you make vodka from?”
“Molasses from sugarcane. It’s not exactly the preferred ingredient, in Russia they prefer rye, wheat, potatoes, but even molasses can be used. It’s all done in the distilling. Once we get a clear liquid, with about forty percent alcohol and as little taste as possible, we’ve done our job.”
“But people who drink vodka will be able to tell it’s not as good as other brands, or the real brand that you’re labeling it with.”
“No, they won’t, because it’s not being sold retail. My friend’s company sells liquor to bars and restaurants, and will sell it as a mix only. No one will be able to tell the difference. They’ll get the vodka at half of what they pay for it shipped over from Europe, the bars will be happy because they’re buying it cheap and charging for the good stuff, and it’s not bootlegging under American law.”
“Just what Garcia did,” she said. “You know how my husband died, don’t you? One of his under-the-table business deals went sour. But I don’t suppose there is anything I can say to stop you?”
“You can run me off the place.”
She shook her head. “And miss all of the excitement? And the nice music and good food at your wake?”
“I have a question,” I said. “Rum is a lot like vodka. You can drink it straight or use it as a mix. In fact, most people like it as a mix or with different ingredients. You completely change the taste by adding banana, orange, coconut, spices, and so forth.”
“Yes…”
“But from what I understand in talking with Samuel, you blend a terrific rum, one that not only tastes good, but has an, uh, exotic effect.”
“Some men believe that my rum made them much more potent in bed.”
“What do you think?”
“I believe it’s what a man has in his mind that makes his manhood potent. If men believe that rum will make them better lovers…” She shrugged.
My mind was churning. I was getting an idea, an expansion of my bootleg liquor.
“Now you are scheming more.”
“Will you stop reading my mind?”
She looked around clandestinely and then leaned toward me to whisper.
“Let me tell you a secret. I’m not a mind reader. I’m a face reader!”
* * *
We sat on her porch and drank lemonade that had a kick to it while we negotiated the terms. We made a simple deal on the distillery—I did all the work, paid all the expenses and gave her 25 percent of the net profit. On managing the farm, I took the quarter percentage.
I told her what was spinning around in my head about rum.
“When I was down in Belize Town a while back, I had an interesting conversation in a bar with a liquor salesman for the West Indies cartel. I was mulling over the vodka idea and was getting a notion of how the liquor business worked. He knew nothing about vodka except that he saw it in some of the better bars and clubs in Caribbean hotspots, but he gave me an eye-opener as to how the cartel operates.
“As you know, they sell to thousands of bars and restaurants in the Caribbean, controlling the distribution of almost all the rum sold by the glass. And they’re complete bastards. They keep tight control on the market and treat their employees as if slavery were still legal. The salesman is being fired because he has some medical problems and the company wants to get rid of him. That makes him real unhappy because he started working for them before I was born. He told me that the cartel forces bars and restaurants to pay a premium price for the basic rums that are used in mixed drinks. These rums are the cheapest to produce, but the distillers want the prices kept up because if the basics get too cheap, it will cut into the sales of the premium aged and blended rums.”
I paused. “Are you following me?”
“I have ears, don’t I?”
I grinned. “Nice ears, too, perfect for nibbling.”
“Before you spin too much wool, please understand that I am a widow, not a fool. You won’t make any financial deals with me by offering me your little manhood. You would be surprised how many offers I get from full-grown men who think they can get into my money jar by getting into my honey pot.”
“Sarita, let me assure you that nothing about sex in the colony surprises me. And let me further assure you that I am full-grown.”
I took a closer look at my lemonade. I was getting horny just sitting across from this mature sensuous woman. Did she spike my lemonade with some of that aphrodisiac that she was famous for putting into rum?
“You think that you will sell your basic rum to the cartel’s customers at a lower price. There are two things wrong with your plan. The first is that the cartel controls the distribution of rum everywhere in the Caribbean. They could underprice you—”
“Not without cutting their own throats.”
“Or they can swat you away like a fly. There was a rum distillery here in the district that was driven out of business by the cartel, did you know that?”
“I heard it burned.”
“You heard right. It burned to the ground after it tried to sell its products directly to bars and restaurants outside the colony. One night there was a fire, and no more distillery.”
“Well, I don’t plan on being that much of an annoyance. The cartel sales rep told me that that distillery had openly challenged the cartel, a challenge they couldn’t afford to ignore. My business plan is different.” I was making the business plan up as I went, but it was pouring out in gushes. Basically, it was similar to how I saw the vodka scam.
“This salesman has worked the Caribbean for over twenty years. He knows the territory. He’s in the process of retiring. I’m sure I can get him to work for me under the table, give him a piece of the action on whatever he brings in, a commission. He’ll get orders for basic rum and we’ll provide the product in unlabeled bottles. The bar, restaurant, or whoever is buying the product will put their own label on it. We can provide them with a variety of labels, have a print shop in Belize Town do them.”
“You think the cartel won’t know where the rum is coming from just because it’s unlabeled?”
“Not at all. I just don’t intend on making rum a big business, that’s all. I see vodka as where the money is, and it’s the safe bet. There aren’t any vodka cartels that will break our kneecaps if they find out their product is being imitated. America’s a wide-open market for vodka, that’s where the big money will be. We�
��ll just pick up a little money with rum in the Caribbean.”
She looked at my pants. “Do you have someone in your pocket?”
“Excuse me?”
“You keep saying ‘we’ as if you had someone who was insane enough to get involved in this crazy scheme with you.”
“Trust me, Sarita, you’ll have no problems except figuring out how to spend all the money that pours in.”
“Understand this, my fine Russian, Britisher, whatever you are. If you get my distillery burnt because you’ve antagonized the cartel, I’m going to put a curse on you that will burn your grown-man ass.”
“You said you weren’t a witch.”
“I never said I wasn’t a bitch.”
29
Sarah came into the kitchen from the garden to check on the progress of Ann, a Creole girl helping Sarah while the girl’s aunt, who was employed as their cook, took a trip to Belize Town to attend a wedding.
“Ann?”
Yams waiting to be peeled were sitting on the counter along with the knife Sarah had given the girl to use. Sarah shook her head. Her regular cook was a dream, but this girl acted like she had been taken away from something important—like hanging around street corners in Corozal Town flirting with boys. She was a pretty thing, but one look at her attitude and Sarah had correctly decided the girl would not be much help around the kitchen.
Noise came from the breezeway that lay between the kitchen and the main house. It sounded like giggling. Sarah’s immediate impression was that Ann was outside talking to friends when she should be in the kitchen working.
The door to the breezeway was ajar. Sarah opened it and stopped, stunned. Ann was bent forward against the breezeway wall with her skirt hiked up, her buttocks exposed. Behind her was Jack, his pants and shorts down, pumping his penis frantically in and out. He looked over at Sarah but didn’t stop what he was doing.
The scene disgusted her. She slammed the door shut and spun around, heading back to the sink where she picked up the sharp knife lying on the counter and started peeling the yams, her face flushed, her mind swirling, her hands moving in a blur, slicing the skin off the vegetables. She worked in such a frenzy, the knife slipped and she cried out as the sharp blade caught her finger. She immediately dropped the knife in the sink. She decided to go out the back door of the kitchen and around the house to enter by the front instead of passing Jack and the girl again.
The Betrayers Page 16
