“What’s a shame?” I asked.
“Kenni’s been so happy up to now.” She lowered her voice. “You’ve been really good for her, Matt. Really.”
“I like her.” I said it a little warily.
“Even if this is just a shipboard romance you’ve been good for her.”
“Thanks. To answer the question you didn’t ask, I don’t know exactly what it is. For a minute I thought you were volunteering to be maid of honor.”
“But she’s got four sisters!” Jan laughed. “Besides, we don’t really know each other all that well. We just live in the same building and have the occasional cup of coffee together, you know how it is in New York.”
“I know how it is. Of my two closest friends in the world, one lives way upstate, and the other lives in Nebraska. In New York, I have acquaintances.”
“Exactly. Not that I mind, really.”
“Still,” I said, “you know her well enough to think I’m good for her. Whatever that means.”
“Oh, well,” Jan said. “You don’t have to be best friends to talk about men. And I’ve seen some of the guys she goes out with.” She shook her head.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re exactly the kind of guys you’d expect to ask a librarian out.”
“Accountants,” I suggested. “Clerks. Computer programmers.”
“Nerds,” Jan summed up. “It’s not just the jobs they do, it’s them. I mean, they’re stereotypes, but Kenni isn’t. She’s bright and funny and I think she’s always longing for adventure.”
“I think she got more adventure than she needed last night.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you. You work in a glamour industry, and you’ve been in the newspapers. You’re—you’re dashing.”
I cracked up. “Me and Errol Flynn.”
“Well, you are. And it’s done wonders for Kenni’s ego to think that you’ve known Monica Teobaldi and Wendy Ichimi and now, for a week at least, you’re paying all your attention to her.”
Gee, I thought, in different ways, I’ve bowled over Lee H. Schaeffer and Kenni Clayton in the same week. Wonderfulness can be a curse.
I was going to expand on the topic, but the shower stopped, and I didn’t want Kenni to hear how good I was for her. Jan called out and told her I was here. Kenni sang back that she was sorry for the delay, but that she’d be just a few minutes, and would Jan hand her in her stuff. Jan complied, the bathroom door closed again, and we could hear a buzzing noise. I started, puzzled, but all it was was a hair dryer.
“Would you like to join us for dinner?” I asked Jan. “We’re just going to walk around and find a place.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m just going to take it easy. Got a little too much sun today, I think.”
“Will you do me a favor and check in on Spot from time to time, maybe play with him?”
“Why don’t you bring him with you?”
“I never got around to finding out if it was allowed.”
“It must be. I saw a lot of passengers coming and going with their dogs. There’s just a guy in the customs building who checks their shot tags.”
“Thanks. That’s an even better favor.”
I went to get Spot, figuring this would give Kenni a chance to finish getting dressed outside the steam of the bathroom. It’s a funny thing. Kenni had probably dressed and undressed an equal number of times in front of Jan and in front of me during the course of the week, but all of us instantly knew that it would be weird if she did either in front of both of us at once. There are different kinds of intimacy, and they don’t mix.
Spot looked at me hopefully as I came into the room. He seemed to suspect that this wasn’t just another jaunt around the deck for sanitary purposes when I snapped the lead on his collar. When we left the cabin without my having taken some paper to blot him up with, he was sure of it. By the time I met Kenni at her door he was ecstatic, wagging not only his tail, but the whole rear third of his body.
The load of the ship and the level of Davidstown Harbor were such that the gangplank was placed on our own deck, about a hundred feet from Jan and Kenni’s cabin. We gave our names to the ship’s officer at the port, he checked us off a list, and down the plank we went.
The farther south you get, the less twilight there is. What there was of it in Davidstown, though, was beautiful. It made the pastels of the bustling town even softer, and lights twinkled a welcome. There was a fresh, gentle breeze off the Atlantic, and it made the palms and myrtles dance as it carried the fragrance of unfamiliar flowers to us. Even the cannon in the harbor park, which, according to a plaque on a marble pedestal in front of it, had seen real action against real pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, seemed friendly somehow—as if it knew that the visitors to the island these days were here not to take loot, but to leave it behind them.
“It’s beautiful,” Kenni breathed. She didn’t look so bad herself, in a low-backed white dress and a string of pearls.
“Glad you like it,” I said, as though I had personally arranged for the harbor here to be lovely instead of the greasy slums most waterfronts were.
Spot was too well behaved to try to break loose and frolic in the grass, but by God, he wanted to. I made him a promise to find some place for him to run free while he was here.
Tonight, however, was not going to be the night. Tonight he would walk with us to a restaurant, wait patiently outside while we ate, accompany us if we decided to take a stroll under the subtropical moon, and see us safely back to the ship, keeping his lithe body and sharp teeth ready at all times.
That was the plan. I am not good at plans. Or rather, I’m fine at plans, they just never seem to work out.
We crossed the small park and went into a small but ornate structure of brick, with concrete pillars and pediments that turned out to be what is usually called the customs shed.
The customs people were prepared to deal with a whole lot more people than they needed to process this evening. Kenni, Spot, and I had to wind our way through a maze of chains on our way to the customs desk. It almost got to be fun. En route, we passed a couple of men in uniform, khaki shirts and shorts with white pith helmets, who were making their way to the ship as we were making ours away from it. Customs men, I figured, some formality on the ship they had to take care of. We smiled isn’t-this-ridiculous smiles and let each other pass. One of the men stopped to pet Spot, but still smiling, his companion hurried him along. I noticed that one of them, the one in charge, did indeed have eyes of electric blue. The contrast with his coffee-black skin was striking.
A few seconds later, we made it to the desk itself, where a milk chocolate-colored man with hazel eyes, who was wearing a uniform in three shades of green, smiled what I was already beginning to think of as the Islanders’ Smile, and asked us for our passports.
“Mr. Cobb?” he said as he looked at mine.
“That’s me,” I said.
“Mr. Matthew Cobb of New York City, U.S. of A.?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I nodded to make it more emphatic. “Is something wrong?”
“That, I am happy to say, is not for me to determine.” His hand disappeared for a second under his desk and came back filled with a small, but very effective-looking .32 revolver.
Kenni screamed. Spot growled. I told him to stop.
The customs man was still smiling. I told him this had to be some sort of mix-up.
“I sincerely hope so.” He drew his head back a little so he could see who he wanted to speak to without turning his head.
“Sergeant!” he called. The man in khaki with the blue eyes turned around, saw the man holding the gun on us, and began hopping over chains to make it back to the desk. His associate followed.
Kenni kept trying to say something, but mercifully, she was too upset to get more than a series of k sounds past her lips.
The blue-eyed man said he was Sergeant Milton Bolt of the Royal St. David’s
Island Constabulary, and I would come with him.
I said sure. He had a gun, too. His smile brightened. These guys would smile if their own appendix burst.
“Take care of Spot,” I told Kenni. “Go stay with Jan and take care of Spot.”
She was still standing there speechless as I left her.
14
“I’m one tough gazookis what hates all palookas what ain’t on the ups and squares.”
—Jack Mercer,
“Popeye” (syndicated)
I WASN’T AS COOL as I was trying to let on. It’s just that it’s always a good idea to behave reasonably, and, until you can’t help it, to let the guy with the gun decide what reasonable is. Also, getting yourself shot is one thing, but I had a woman and a dog to worry about, too.
Sergeant Bolt led me to a late-model Plymouth with an impressive crest on the door. He graciously held the back door for me (he’d put the gun away by now), and assisted me into the caged-in portion of the car. Then he got in front and told his driver to take us to headquarters.
“You forgot the handcuffs,” I said.
“You are not under arrest, Mr. Cobb. Merely assisting the police with their inquiries.”
“Then why all the guns?”
“The customs man is a fool. When the new administration came in, they cleaned up the customs department of the men who had winked at the drug traffic. So now we have honest men, but fools. Once he drew his weapon, the main objective was to get him to put his away, and with a scared man, the only way to do that is to convince him to leave the shooting to a more competent man. I will apologize to your lovely companion.”
“I’ll pass it along. It might be a good idea for you to stay clear of her for a while.”
Sergeant Bolt laughed, and turned to give me a blue-eyed grin through the grillwork. Now that we were such friends, I could ask him some more pointed questions.
“You know, I would have assisted you just as enthusiastically with your inquiries if you’d just left a note with the steward telling me to drop by your headquarters.”
“Ah, the constable and I were on our way on board to proffer just such an invitation when the customs man was indiscreet.”
“What inquiries am I supposed to be assisting you with?”
Bolt was apologetic. “It is not part of my duty to tell you that. I am merely to bring you.”
The driver spoke for the first time. “Al will tell you.”
Before I could ask who Al was, Bolt had snapped the guy’s head off. Discipline was strict in the Royal St. David’s Constabulary.
“There is a Detective Inspector on the case. He will tell you what he deems prudent to tell you.”
“It’s about Burkehart, isn’t it? What did he try to do, fence the knives?”
I could see the back of Bolt’s neck tighten; he’d blown one, and he knew it. “We will have no further conversation, if you please, Mr. Cobb, and we will forget your last remark. Please remember that from here on, anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Do you understand?”
So it was Burkehart. Now what was that shmuck up to?
“I asked you, Mr. Cobb, have you understood?”
“What? Oh, yes. Perfectly clear. Thank you.”
Constabulary headquarters was in a small, cozy-looking building that could have doubled for a beachfront saloon in any movie or TV show set in the tropics. That was on the outside. On the inside, aside from the fact that all the uniformed men were wearing shorts, it could have been one of the smaller precincts on Staten Island. The place was even painted in New York City decor—sour-apple green.
Bolt led me to an office where one of the sexiest-looking women I ever saw was sitting at a small schoolroom desk off in a corner. I was polite and said hello. Nothing fresh. She arranged her beautiful dark face into a passable imitation of a frozen trout.
“Be seated. D.I. Buxton will be with you shortly.”
I took a seat, facing a desk. It was a comfortable seat, in a pleasant room. I’m sure word had gotten around that I was not only an American, but an American who could conceivably have a lot to say about what messages about St. David’s Island got across to the potential American tourist. I had no such power, of course, but they didn’t know that.
What I knew was that if I had been Joe Schmoe off the boat, or worse, an Islander, I would be sitting in a stinky little interrogation room with no windows, literally sweating out what they were going to do with me. I also knew that there is not a cop in the world who likes being leaned on by upstairs.
Now was the time to be reasonable at all costs.
D.I. Buxton didn’t make it easy. He walked in like an actor crossing a stage. He stopped at his desk, told me he was Detective Inspector Paul Buxton, and that I was who I was. He ignored the fact that I had stood and extended a hand. Instead he sat, nodded to me to resume my seat, and repeated the British-formula warning about things being used in evidence.
I said it was fine with me. I kept looking at Buxton, hoping I wasn’t staring. I hadn’t necessarily been expecting him to look or be like anything in particular, but I definitely wasn’t expecting him to be a blond, with a straight, narrow nose and skin pinker than Kenni’s. His lips were full, and his hair was a platinum Afro that stopped just short of being wild.
He stared at me. This was undoubtedly interrogation technique, designed to make me uncomfortable. Either that, or the Powers That Be had ridden him really hard, and he’d decided to take it out on me personally.
I crossed my legs and smiled blandly, the picture of patience.
Finally, he asked me a question.
“Are you enjoying St. David’s Island, Mr. Cobb?”
“I’ve liked everything I could see from the window of a police car.”
“I meant when you came ashore earlier this afternoon.”
“I didn’t come ashore until about a minute and a half before Sergeant Bolt and the other man approached me.”
“I suppose now you wish to complain about the brandishing of guns.”
“Not at all. Sergeant Bolt explained most satisfactorily.” There was something about talking to the Islanders that made me want to sound as British as they did. Probably a mistake. I’d have to watch myself.
Buxton cleared his throat and shuffled his papers. He was young for a Detective Inspector, about my age. I think he’d been expecting this big-shot American to be somebody loud and bombastic, somebody to whom it would be a pleasure to deliver a Declaration of No Special Favors in This Jurisdiction, No Matter Who You Are. Now he had the speech all prepared, and I wasn’t giving him the chance to deliver it.
He shuffled some more papers. At last he said, “Why not?”
“Why not what, Inspector?”
“Why didn’t you come ashore this afternoon? If you truly didn’t—we’ll be checking that, you know.”
“I’m counting on it.” I smiled at him again, just a friendly smile, nothing sarcastic about it. “I stayed aboard because I was looking after a sick friend.”
“I take it, then, that your friend is feeling better.”
“Very much so.”
“May I have the name of this friend?”
“Of course. Her name is Mary Kenneth Clayton. People call her Kenni. She might have a complaint about guns being drawn. The customs man frightened her half to death.”
“She was the woman with you at the dock?”
“That’s right.”
“She had been ill. Seasickness?”
“Poison.”
Buxton’s pink face reddened. “I am in charge of this investigation, Mr. Cobb, and until such time as my superiors see fit to replace me, I shall run it my way. I don’t care what interests you represent, or who in the government cares to appease them, I will brook no frivolity from you. Is that clear?”
“Very clear. Feel better now that you got it out?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s not important. Look, we can save a lot of time and t
rouble here.”
“Murder investigations frequently take a lot of time and trouble, Mr. Cobb. I will be the judge of what time needs to be expended here.”
I made my eyes round and said, “Of course you will,” but inside, I was going, murder investigations? Murder investigations?
“Look,” I said, “I plan to cooperate in every way, I swear. I want to. I’d just like to know what’s going on.”
“That is the purpose of an investigation, Mr. Cobb. It is for me to find out what is going on, and for you to assist me to the best of your ability. You say you plan to cooperate. Fine. I would like to see some cooperation.”
This guy wasn’t going to be any help. “May I please speak to Al?” I said. “Whoever he is.”
Buxton looked murder at me. The shorthand-taker stopped trying to imitate a piece of furniture long enough to look at me with horror.
“What did you say?” The strain in Buxton’s voice was evident.
“I—er—I just said I wanted to talk to Al. The constable said Al would explain why I was being brought in.”
“Oh,” he said. “Did he now?”
“That’s what he said. If he made a mistake, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, he made a mistake, all right, but it’s nothing you have to apologize for, Mr. Cobb. I am Al. It is a name I am not supposed to know. The lower ranks like to refer to me that way. It is short for Albino.”
“You’re not an albi—”
“I know I’m not a bloody albino, thank you!”
I decided to play it sheepish. “Sorry,” I said.
Buxton grabbed the edges of his desk, took a deep breath, and showed me a rueful smile. “Thank you, Mr. Cobb. It’s not really your apology to make, but the man who owes it to me never will make it, so yours is welcome.”
I saw what he meant. Bolt’s driver had set me up to insult his boss for him, but if Buxton called him to account for it, it would look as if the Detective Inspector’s skin was thin as well as pale.
Now Buxton stood up, came around the desk, and offered his hand to me. I rose and took it. We returned to our seats.
“This island,” Buxton said, “has a long history as a society and a short one as a nation. It is our boast that our people are so thorough a mixture of black people and white that no racism is possible. That boast, Mr. Cobb, is not true. The capacity of human beings for racism is apparently limitless. I am no colonist here; there are as many Africans in my ancestry as in any man’s on this island. It is my misfortune that in my family, the European genes happen to predominate. I am, as the phrase goes, ‘white looking,’ and no one will ever let me forget it.”
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