by Blake Banner
Twelve
She left after a couple of hours without saying anything. I watched her dress, pull on her shoes and leave, taking the papers for the car-hire with her. After a time staring at the light and shadow reflected from the pool onto the ceiling, I rose and showered again, and dressed, telling myself I had to get a grip. I had made two stupid mistakes in one morning; I could not afford a third.
At one I went down to the dining room and ordered steak, fries and a beer. I sat by the cold fireplace and stared unseeing at the door, weighing fruitlessly in my mind whether I should be going after Constantino Marcos, who had been on the island longer, or Kostadin Milojević, who had arrived more recently. Gonzalo had said my man was definitely Constantino, but you could read that two ways equally convincingly: he was protecting Milojević by pointing the finger at Marcos, because Bloque Meta had told him to shield him, or he was selling out Marcos to save his own skin. Both were equally likely. I drummed the table and considered the curious fact that too many options can seriously limit your choices.
My steak arrived and as I was cutting into it, through the glass doors of the dining room, I saw two men enter the bar. The shorter, black guy had a chest the size of a beer barrel, arms like legs and legs you would not like to meet in a dark alley at night. The taller, older white guy had jeans and a linen jacket he’d probably inherited from his great-grandfather.
They spoke to the kid behind the bar, who pointed through the glass doors at me and they made their way to the dining room with the world-weary faces of cops who had really hoped to reach early retirement without having ever to solve a crime.
When they pushed into the dining room there were only a couple of other tables occupied and the diners looked up at them, then glanced at me and turned back to their food. I watched them approach my table with some curiosity. The white one with the amorphous jacket reached in his pocket and looked slightly exhausted when he pulled out his badge, like he’d hoped it wouldn’t be there this time. He looked at it, then showed it to me. His accent wasn’t American, but it wasn’t any kind of British, either.
“Are you David Friedman?”
His pal showed me his badge too.
I smiled. “You’re showing me a couple of badges.” I shrugged. “Who are you, and why do you want to know who I am?”
The white one sighed and said, “Detective Inspector Des Jones. This is Detective Sergeant Elmo Santos, Royal St. George Police Force. Are you David Friedman?”
“Yeah, I am David Friedman, and I am having lunch. Why?”
He looked at me with eyes that were more weary than bored and took hold of the chair opposite me. “Do you mind, Mr. Friedman, if we sit down?”
“Yeah, like I said, I am having lunch.”
He pulled out the chair anyway and sat heavily. His pal sat next to him. Detective Inspector Jones said, “We’ll try not to take up much of your time, sir. And it is always quicker and easier if people cooperate.” He gave me a tired smile. “It’s obvious, really, when you think about it.”
I sighed. “You couldn’t call? Or ask me to pass by the cop shop?”
He shook his head. “Not really, no.” He hunched his shoulders. “Small island, beaches and boats everywhere… Never really know what people are going to do. And believe me…” He nodded sagely and ponderously at the same time. “People do some funny things. Especially when the police tell them they want to have a chat.”
Santos spoke for the first time, shaking his head, with his eyes closed. “Not possible, no way. Now, Mr. Friedman, let’s make this quick and painless as possible. Where were you last night between ten PM and two AM?”
“Dining with friends at the Tortuga. The friends were Maria Garcia Ortega, who owns this joint, Helen Wilberforce and Gonzalo Herrera.”
Santos stared at Jones’s face, like he was waiting for some kind of signal. The only signal he got was a sigh that was even heavier than the previous ones, followed by a soft grunt. Then, “Gonzalo Herrera. How did you happen to know Mr. Herrera, sir?”
“I was introduced to him last night by Helen and Maria. I was having dinner right here, having just arrived on the island. Gonzalo turned up. I got the impression he and Maria were close, but I could be wrong. We got to talking and he insisted on moving on to the Tortuga, where I dined again, though I wasn’t really hungry.” He raised an eyebrow of inquiry at me and I gave a small shrug. “I had the feeling he didn’t like to be told ‘no.’”
Santos asked, “What is your purpose in visiting St. George, Mr. Friedman?”
I laughed in a way I hoped was self-deprecating. “I’m writing a novel. I know it’s not very original, but that’s why I am here.”
They both grunted and Jones moved in a little closer to where he wanted to be.
“Did you and Mr. Herrera hit it off?”
I raised my eyebrows as high as I could and said, “Say what?”
“Did you get along well? Have a lot in common, a lot to talk about?”
I shook my head and laughed again. “No, not really. I found him overbearing, rude, quite offensive toward the women in the company and”—I raised my hands, disclaiming any legal responsibility for what I was going to say—“this was just my feeling, I am not accusing anybody of anything, but I got the feeling that he was somehow involved in drug trafficking, to which I am deeply opposed on principle, and I really did not like the way he treated Maria.”
Santos asked, “What gave you that impression, Mr. Friedman, that he was involved in drugs?”
I screwed up my face, stared at the wall, puffed out my cheeks and blew. “I dunno…the car, a convertible BMW? His attitude? Little comments he made about his business being import and export, yet he was so unwilling to talk in any detail about what exactly he imported and exported. You know what I mean? And lots of cash. Who pays cash anymore, right? But with him it was cash all the time.” I laughed again and spread my hands. “And then the bodyguards! Black BMW 8 Series and two bodyguards who follow in a Mercedes?” I shrugged again. “Like I say, I don’t know, but I just got a bad feeling.”
Jones nodded like he understood, cleared his throat and asked, “How bad was that feeling, Mr. Friedman?” But before I could answer he changed the question. “How much did it annoy you the way he treated Miss Garcia—Maria?”
I gave him my best blank stare. “I don’t know. How do you quantify that? It annoyed me. He was disrespectful to her…”
“And she is a very attractive woman.”
I smiled. “You think so?”
“Don’t you, Mr. Friedman?”
“Well, I guess a guy would have to have pretty thin blood not to notice. She is very attractive. But if I hear you barking, Detective Inspector, I hear you doing it up the wrong tree. My taste runs more to the English rose rather than the dusky Latina.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed.”
“Are you telling me that you and Helen Wilberforce have made an, um, err… connection?”
“We got on pretty well last night, but don’t go letting your bloodhounds run away with you. That was it, we got on well. She’s pretty cute and we talked a lot.”
And he came to the question he had been wanting to ask all along.
“Well enough for her to lend you her car this morning?”
“Absolutely! Not everyone would do that. But we hit it off pretty good. She’s going to help me find a house and maybe I’ll hang around for a while.”
Santos asked, “Where did you go with her truck, Mr. Friedman?”
“The White Hills…” I paused to give a small shrug. “The sugar plantations around the lagoons. I kind of explored without any fixed direction. You mind telling me the purpose of these questions?”
“Just tell us, Mr. Friedman, please, did you go anywhere near the Barbary Cliffs?”
I didn’t hesitate. “No, that’s a whole separate day and I wanted to get back for lunch and to see Helen. Furthest south I went was Jackstown, then into the sugar plantation, White Hills do
wn by the beach, and then back here. That was about it.”
Jones frowned and scratched his head. “Well, I wonder if you could explain this, sir. We have a witness who claims he saw you along the Lighthouse Road on the Barbary Cliffs this morning, driving Helen Wilberforce’s truck. How can you explain that?”
I shook my head and smiled all at the same time. “I don’t have to. Maybe he saw me in Jackstown and has transposed it in his memory. Memory is very unreliable, Detective Inspector. Either way, he says he saw me, that’s his mistake, not mine. So I don’t need to explain it, he does. Now, are you going to tell me what this is all about? Your couple of minutes were up a while ago and I would like to enjoy my lunch.”
Jones nodded a few times at the tablecloth, then looked up at me, studied my face and nodded a few times more.
“Mr. Herrera was murdered this morning, on the Barbary Cliffs.”
I gave him a frown I had practiced, and used, many times. It was a frown that said, “You’re bullshitting me,” and combined it with, “You’re trying to trap me somehow,” and a big dose of, “Whoa! I was not expecting this!” All of which was designed to communicate subliminally to my interrogator that I had no idea that particular person had been killed. Usually, with the right buildup, it worked pretty well.
Gonzalo was nothing to me, and I didn’t like him, and to a New Yorker murder was not exactly something that left you reeling. So neither of those points could be what I focused on. I gave a small laugh and frowned as I made out I was putting the pieces together.
“So, what are you telling me? You think: new guy on the island, let’s go pin it on him, and while we’re at it, we’ll fabricate a witness to say they saw him near the crime scene?”
Santos was shaking his head. “We din’ fabricate no witness, man…”
“No?” I gave an ugly bark. “Are you sure? Because it seems to me the obvious place for you guys to be looking is at his associates in the drug scene! What about his damn bodyguards? Or rival gangs? Are you making up witnesses for them, too?”
Jones’s voice was ponderous. “Mr. Friedman, I would stop before you go too far. Nobody is fabricating evidence or trying to frame anybody. We simply wanted to know where you were, especially as a witness claimed he saw you in the vicinity of the crime scene. It’s standard police procedure. Now, we are nearly done, Mr. Friedman. Could you just tell me, what was your job before you started writing?”
“I was a lawyer, in New York.”
He nodded at me a few times, scanning my face with his eyes. He was telling me he could see right through me, and he was telling me that he was no fool. I ignored him and he said, “And before that?”
“I was in the British Royal Marines.”
He looked away and seemed to scan the walls and the ceiling, like he had all his ideas pinned up there and he was checking them out before speaking again. Finally he said, “Is that the only military unit you were in?”
I scowled at him like he was nuts and answered, “Yeah, isn’t that enough? What are you driving at?”
He shook his head. “Nothing, Mr.… Friedman.” He smiled and stood. “I was also in the army, many years ago. There was little else for a young man to do on this island, but join the British Army or the Navy. It always helped if you then wanted to join the police.” I watched him but didn’t answer. “Didn’t come across many foreigners, except Kiwis and Ozzies. You only really came across foreigners—Scandinavians, Americans—in the special forces. The Special Boat Service, the Special Air Service…”
I shrugged and shook my head. “I wouldn’t know. Like I said, I was with the Royal Marines.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what you said.”
Santos stood and gave me a long, hard look. “St. George used to be a real peaceful place, know what I mean? Nice place for a holiday, family, kids. Lately it’s become kind of violent. Not a good place to go out at night. Not such a good place for a holiday, or to write books.”
“That your personal advice, Sergeant?”
“Yeah, my personal advice.”
“Then if I find somebody who can use it, I’ll pass it on.”
Jones sighed and shook his head, and they left. They didn’t leave me feeling very tranquil, and I could hear Colonel Jane Harrison nagging me inside my head about having acquired a high profile before I had even identified the damn target. The worst thing was, she was right.
I finished my cold steak and fries and drained my beer, then called for a shot of whisky and sat savoring it and staring at the ceiling. Somebody had told the cops I had been driving around the Barbary Cliffs that morning. But I hadn’t seen anybody south of Jackstown. So how had they seen me?
Unless they hadn’t. Unless Jones had got his information from some other source. I drained my whisky and stepped out of Old Joe’s onto Main Street. On Main Street the scene had changed subtly. The afternoon was growing sultry while I was having lunch, and you could feel the humidity rising in the air. Looking south, I could see heavy clouds building on the southern horizon, though overhead the sky was still blue and the sun was baking the dust on the road. A listless breeze stirred the tops of the palm trees, making them toss and sigh. There was nobody about. Not even a mad dog or an Englishman.
I crossed the road to the Trade Winds. The doors and the windows were open and the four overhead fans were stirring the heavy air with a slow, steady throb. Helen was behind the bar, leaning on her forearms, looking at me where I stood in the doorway. Her features were indistinct in the dull light.
I said, “You don’t have air-conditioning on St. George?”
“When it’s really hot, everybody wants to sit outside, or at the open windows. It gets wasted. You’re just blowing cold air out onto the street.”
“Are we going to have a storm?”
“Are you being literal or metaphorical?”
I pushed away from the doorjamb and crossed the floor to the bar. “Maybe a little of both.”
“You a whisky drinker?”
“Can you tell?”
“My father was a whisky drinker.”
She reached under the bar and pulled out a bottle of Macallan and two shot glasses, filled each and slid one across to me. We drained the glasses and she smacked her lips and placed the glass on the bar.
“Yes, according to the radio we are going to have a storm, a real one. And I think we are going to have a metaphorical one too.”
She refilled the glasses, and when she set down the bottle she didn’t put the cork back in. I said, “Have you got some news for me?”
She nodded. “Yes, I have some news for you.” She held up her glass, we toasted and knocked back the shots.
“Word is,” she said, “that Constantino Marcos was an officer in the Serbian army. He fled Europe to escape prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that has been kept quiet all these years due to some powerful friends of the mayor.” She refilled our glasses. “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. He, Constantino, has been a close, dear friend of mine for over ten years. He was a close friend of my father’s.” She refilled her glass and stared at me with angry eyes. “And I know why you’re here. So yes, I think we are going to have a storm.”
Thirteen
A heavy shadow passed over the street outside. A heavy sigh made the palms bow and toss, like they knew what was coming and didn’t like it. A heavy gloom seeped in through the windows and filled the bar.
Helen splashed more whisky into the glasses. I didn’t touch mine, but she picked hers up and took it halfway to her mouth, then gave a dry laugh. “Who said that…I’m trying to drown my sorrows, but the bastards keep learning how to swim.”
I smiled. “That’s almost funny.”
“It’s not mine.” She knocked back the shot. “I’m not that original. It’s that Mexican painter with one eyebrow…”
“Frida Kahlo.”
“You’re not drinking.”
“I need you sober.”
She had
the bottle in her hand and burst out laughing. “He needs me sober! Somebody needs me at last! I should call my mother: ‘Mummy, a man said he needed me!’ She’d be delighted, only she’s dead. Do you think I can get a special emergency line to Hell?”
“Stop it.”
She eyed me with surly eyes and knocked back another shot. “Don’t tell me what to do. Or what not to do. Drink with me and I’ll behave.”
I’d been in enough crises in my life that I knew you always have to humor someone who is determined to get drunk. Anything else makes them drink more and get drunk faster. So I picked up my glass and drained it. As I set it down I said, “So your dad was a cop.”
She scowled at me. “I never said that.”
“It’s not so hard to guess, Helen. He tried to be one of the good guys in a place where corruption is a way of life. Maybe he ended up paying the price for that. And your mother was a soak who betrayed him, probably not in a big way, but in a thousand small ways, every day…”
She stared at me with her mouth slightly open. When I’d finished she threw back her head and screamed with laughter. “My God!” She covered her mouth with her hand. “It has a brain! It has sensitivity and intuition! And empathy!”
“That’s not polite.”
She dropped her hand from her mouth, still gaping, her eyes alive with bitter laughter. “Polite?”
“To call a person ‘it.’”
She shook her head. “But you’re not a person, Mr. David Friedman. You’re a monster, who cuts off people’s heads, and burns down clubs full of people, and hunts down old men, to kill them.”
I frowned. “Old men?”
She leaned forward with her hands on the edge of the bar, shaking her head at me. “What do you think Constantino is? He’s an old man! I don’t know what you think he’s done, I don’t know what the Hague says he’s done, or the Croatians who brought the charges against him. I don’t know any of that! But I do know Constantino, and I know that Constantino is a good, kind, gentle man. People do ugly things in war, as anyone will when their life is threatened. But war passes, and it takes with it the horrors and we have to start again. We all deserve a second chance, David. Peace brings with it the chance of redemption, and we should be big enough, and human enough, to offer people that chance.”