by Lou Cameron
She finished her count, drew the leather things tight, and added, ‘There, I’m satisfied about me pearlies, sae coom back oopstairs and satisfy me some more!’
He was more than willing. But they never made it. He naturally let her proceed him up the stairs. So the shit waiting for them behind the drapes of a dark landing must have let Flora pass before he swung a side of beef, a beer keg, or something just as big and heavy into the back of Captain Gringo’s skull.
When he came to, maybe half an hour later, the tall American found himself stretched fiat on the lobby floor with the night clerk, Gaston, and some fat guy, who had to be the house dick, on their knees all around him.
He cursed Gaston and said, ‘Get that fucking wet rag out of my face and tell me what happened to Flora!’
Gaston looked blank and replied, ‘You were avec someone, Dick? These others tell me you rolled down the stairs all by yourself before they fetched me, très discreetly, from my own room upstairs!’
The night clerk frowned and said, ‘Oh, that is right There was a woman with el Señor Walker, earlier, down here. The Escocia bonita in 203. Since she did not roll down the stairs with him, sometime after they’d left, I did not see fit to report it.’
The house dick was already up and heading for the stairwell as Captain Gringo struggled to rise, Gaston holding him and pleading, ‘Take it easy, you species of idiot! You could have a bad concussion, and if you drop dead, I shall never speak to you again!’
‘Lemme go, goddamnit! I’m all right now. I just got run over by a steamroller or something and Flora’s carrying a king’s ransom in unstrung pearls!’
The mention of portable wealth may have persuaded Gaston to help Captain Gringo up. But he still said to take it easy as he followed the bigger soldier of fortune up the stairs.
As they scaled them, Captain Gringo patted himself down for further damage. But he still had his wallet, money belt, and even his gun. He groaned, ‘Son of a bitch, they must have been just after her. They sapped me and I just lay there like a pile of shit on the landing until I rolled over in my sleep and just kept rolling!’
‘Who are we talking about, Dick? Why would British Intelligence rob poor Flora MacTavish of anything?’
‘Oh, that’s right, you weren’t there when another redhead opened the door. Never mind. I’ll explain later.’
As they moved down the hallway toward 203, the house dick was coming out. He put a finger to his lips and rolled his eyes at the so-far closed doors all around. Then he whispered, ‘Nada. La Señorita is not in her room. Her luggage is missing too. There is nothing but a somewhat rumpled bed to indicate she was ever in 203.’
Gaston moved forward as if to double-check.
Captain Gringo grabbed his arm and said, ‘There isn’t time. We know this hotel, and it would be dumb for this guy to lie to us, so let’s get going before the real sneaks get away!’
Gaston followed him back downstairs. But as they tore out to the dark street, the little Frenchman asked where they were going and why Captain Gringo wasn’t wearing his hat.
The big Yank said, ‘They got my hat if that room’s now empty. They got something else I valued a lot more. You should have seen her, Gaston. She was really stacked!’
‘Little Flora? How curious, I always considered her a bit flat-chested. But then I never saw her with her clothes off, so—’
‘The dame here just now was another Flora, a cousin or something. They were both looking for me because they were both in trouble. Can’t you move any faster, damnit?’
‘Oui, if you’d only tell me where we seem to be going in such a rush.’
‘Waterfront. If the kidnappers don’t have a ketch called the Murrighinn yet, her crew may know more about this mess than we do!’
‘Of course I have no doubt, my dashing youth, since I know nothing at all about this sudden dramatique interest in Floras. What on earth is a Murrighinn, by the way?’
‘Do I look like I speak Gaelic? It’s a pearling ketch. You know what a ketch looks like, don’t you?’
‘Oui, a très tall mast in front of a more petite species of stick. A très common rig in these waters, by the way.’
Captain Gringo had already thought of that. But in the end they found the Murrighinn easily enough. It was moored to the quay at the foot of the calle they’d followed from the hotel, and better yet, a nearby streetlamp gleamed on the white lettering stenciled on her bluff black bow. There was no sign of life on board, not even a deck light. Captain Gringo drew his .38 and headed up the gangplank as Gaston covered him from the quay, his own gun out. It was nice to work with a guy who followed the same drill as you without having to be told to.
Captain Gringo circled the empty deck once and waved' Gaston silently aboard! The ketch was a forty footer, with a deck hatch forward and sunken cabin amidships. As a pearler, she’d been planned with a larger crew and smaller cargo space than most fishing craft. Flora MacTavish’s Thistlegorm had been much larger and equipped with a screw as well as sails. This job ran on sails alone. They were furled at the moment, of course.
Turning to Gaston, Captain Gringo said, ‘Stay up here while I have a look-see below. Unless someone starts shooting at you from the shore, you might want to hoist all three sails and make ready to cast off. We’ve lucked out with a falling tide, see?’
‘Merde alors, do you always commit piracy before you even know what’s aboard, Dick?’
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He eased open the cockpit hatch and lowered himself into the utter darkness below. He’d only gone a few steps before he bumped his head on a hanging lantern. So he struck a match and lit it. He was in the main lounge, chart room, or whatever Flora called it. It was sort of messy, with coils of rope and weighted baskets draped all over the built-in tables and benches. Keeping the .38 in one hand, he took the lamp from its overhead hook and moved quietly forward through what was shaping up to be a deserted vessel. Had they grabbed Flora’s crew as well as Flora? If so, why?
He passed through the galley and silently slid open the hatch of the master’s cabin. The comfortably wide bunk sure looked lonely without Flora in it. He moved past the head to where the companionway ended at a last hatchway. He held the lamp high and slid it open with the muzzle of his .38. The two brown naked bodies on the far side stiffened in the sudden illumination and for a moment he thought he’d caught a buck and a squaw going at it hot and heavy. Then, as they both screamed at him in fear or embarrassment, he saw he’d caught two Indian girls, pretty ones, being very naughty.
The one on top was cursing him in Spanish while the other seemed to be telling him what she thought of him in some Indian dialect. He told them he was sorry in Spanish and then, since there would have been no sense in searching either for hidden weapons, slid the hatch shut again and turned away. As he did so, he felt the vessel heel under him and had to stagger a bit as he raced aft to see what was up.
As he popped out of the hatch into the cockpit, Gaston snapped, ‘Sacre God damn, douse that light! I cast off just now because a very large crowd for this hour of the night seemed to be strolling our way along the quay. If I wanted them to see us out here, I would have fired off a rocket as we drifted seaward, hein?’
Captain Gringo snuffed the lantern, and as his eyes adjusted he saw they were a good hundred yards off shore now and, sure enough, a dark knot of guys were clustered around the landing they’d just left. He glanced aloft and at first thought Gaston was drifting with the tide alone. Then he spotted the sails the Frenchman had run up. They were apparently black as the sky or even blacker, since they blocked out the few stars peering down through the overcast.
He joined Gaston at the tiller, saying, ‘Good thinking. But that rain squall’s gone for sure now, and the wind should shift shoreward again any minute. Let me have the helm and I’ll show you how to put out from a lee shore on the double.’
As they changed places, Gaston asked if they had anything but sails to work with, below. Captain Gringo told hi
m not to be silly and added, ‘Flora MacLeod didn’t even know how electric lights worked. Her people have been living in a swamp since 1695.1 found her crew, though. Couple of Indian broads, like she skid. They must be her divers. They were diving on one another pretty good when I walked in on them just now.’
Gaston sighed and said, ‘Just my luck. On the other hand, perhaps they have only been lonely? Women seem to adjust to perverse pleasures easier than men, since they do not have to worry about anyone calling them swishy, non?’
‘Let’s not worry about that now. Let’s not make them mad at us either. We need them more for navigation than slap and tickle.’
As the ketch heeled over on another seaward tack, Gaston shrugged and said, ‘Pooh, the two of us can easily handle this simple rig, even on the seas of highness. But would you mind telling me where on earth we’re going? San José is that way, non?’
‘We’re not bound for San José right now. We have to get to New Dunmore so we can warn the other Flora and her friends that they’re in some kind of trouble.’
‘Eh bien, that would seem obvious. But just how do you propose to sail this species of glorified lifeboat to an uncharted port neither of us has ever been to, hein?’
‘That’s where the Indian girls up forward come in, once they get through coming. If they sailed up here from New Dunmore, they must know the way back to New Dunmore, right?’
Gaston agreed that seemed logical. So they lit some smokes and beat out to sea for a while. Then the Spanish speaking Indian girl came topside to join them. She demanded they return to Limón and called them pirates when Captain Gringo tried to explain her skipper had been snatched by other bad guys and that she was sure to catch a cold if she didn’t put on some clothes. The naked girl, who finally admitted to being called Maria, said she had no clothes as she was a Ciboney with a rather vague grasp on Christianity despite her name. When he asked her the way to New Dunmore, she said they’d never get it out of her even if they killed her. It got worse when the other came out on deck. She didn’t speak a word of any language either soldier of fortune knew.
Gaston muttered, in English, ‘Eh bien, which one do you want to fuck, Dick? I can’t see what else they may be good for!’
Captain Gringo shushed him and turned back to Maria to insist, ‘Please try to understand. Your mistress and her pearls have been seized by ladrónes. Unless we can get help from her friends in New Dunmore, we may never see her or the pearls again, see?’
Maria shook her head and said, ‘The only ladrónes I know anything about are you two wicked hombres! You have stolen la señorita’s vessel, and we two, her servants. Even as we speak, she has no doubt gone to la policia for to report us missing. So I warn you both, piracy is a most serious business and if the Cristanios don’t get you, Yocahu will!’
‘Who’s Yocahu, some Indian chief?’
‘No, much more powerful. You people call him God. Everyone knows Yocahu punishes the wicked, and you are most wicked pirates, I think.’
‘Can’t we argue about it after we get to New Dunmore, Maria?’
‘No. You say you do not know where it is. So you will never get there. We will die before we tell you, you big wicked ladróne!’
Captain Gringo had had a longer – or at least a rougher –night, so he didn’t argue when Gaston offered to stand the first watch. He went below to Flora’s cabin and turned in, too beat to get an erection despite the perfume haunting her bedding as he slipped between the sheets in the aching nude. He dropped off at once, rocked by the gentle ground swells as Murrighinn sailed south-southeast with the trades blowing steady once more, now that the storm had blown over. He dreamed about black pearls as big as bowling balls and it seemed there was something important about them. But when he woke up to find it was daylight and that he was holding a naked brown breast instead of a big black pearl in his hand, he quickly forgot whatever the dream had been trying to tell him.
It got more confusing when he tried to talk to the Ciboney called Conchita. She tried to tell him something in a lingo that sounded like a tree frog croaking at him. He tried the few words of Maya and Comanche-like Mosquito he knew on her, and she just giggled. So he let go of her tit and sat up. She’d been seated on the edge of the bunk up to now. But she got to her feet and pointed at the open hatchway to croak at him some more. So he assumed Gaston had sent her to fetch him, which was reasonable enough. But getting up and dressed with a naked lady he’d never even kissed staring at him wasn’t. He had a morning hard-on. He told her to beat it in Spanish, Maya, Mosquito and, just for luck, Apache. Conchita just stood there, looking confused. She probably thought it rude to turn her back on a gent while he was talking to her. He sighed and started to toss the bedding aside, figuring that ought to do it. But it didn’t. She was probably used to naked guys where she came from. So he told himself not to be so prudish and simply stood up, both ways, to grope for his duds. Conchita blanched when she saw what he was pointing at her and ran screaming down the corridor in tree frog.
He chuckled, hauled on his pants, shirt, and mosquito boots to go topside. He knew he wouldn’t need his jacket in the warm trades. But it would have been dumb to leave his gun and money belt down below, so he strapped them on as well before he left.
He found Gaston and Maria in the cockpit. When he asked where Conchita might be, the Spanish-speaking Indian girl snapped, ‘She is hiding up in the peak, you wicked hombre. I sent her for to awaken you as this other ladróne demanded. For why did you frighten her by showing immense passion to her? Is it not bad enough you have pirated this vessel? Do you mean to rape us as well?’
At the helm, Gaston sighed and explained, ‘She has been talking like that for some time now, the annoying species of nagging bitch. Do not waste your time assuring her of our innocent intentions. I have told her the whole story at least twice, and she still seems to feel we admire her and the other more than their modest charms would call for, hein?’
Captain Gringo stretched, inhaled some salt air, and said, ‘I’m hungry. Do you want to cook breakfast or shall I?’
Gaston said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am the French chef here. Besides, my aging derrière has had enough of this hard thwart. Take the helm and I shall see what’s on hand in the gallery, hein?’
They changed places. Captain Gringo glanced up to gauge the heel and muttered, ‘What the fuck?’
So Gaston chuckled and said, ‘You just noticed our très colorful rig? The ketch as well as its adorable owner must use the same henna rinse, non?’
‘Non. Flora was a natural redhead. Why she likes fire-engine red sails dudes me – although come to think of it, she did put on a pretty flashy outfit just before we went downstairs last night.’
He turned to the Indian girl, who wasn’t wearing any kind of outfit at all, to ask, ‘Do you have an extra suit of canvas aboard, preferably more subdued? Last night in the dark I thought those sails were black, and this is ridiculous.’
Maria shrugged, bouncing her firm brown breasts in an interesting way, and replied, ‘Pero no. We have a roll of plain canvas in the hold for to patch our sails if need be. But what is the matter with them as they are? I think they are muy bonita.’
Captain Gringo was speaking more to himself than anyone in particular as he muttered, ‘Flora must have liked ’em too. It’s no wonder they noticed her sailing into Limón. Oh well, at least we won’t be taken for coastal pirates by the first gunboat we pass. But I don’t see how anyone out here is going to miss us unless their lookout is color blind!’
Gaston started below to rustle up the grub. Captain Gringo called after him to rustle up some navigation charts while he was at it. Then he settled back to hold Murrighinn steady to the course Gaston had set, for now. By dead reckoning they had to be fifty sea miles from Limón, too far out to see the lee shore. He didn’t want to see the shore this morning. Any minute now they’d be off Panama instead of Costa Rica, and Colombian gunboats got so silly when they spotted suspected smugglers in their w
aters. They were way the hell too far from the Gulf of Darien to worry about the finer details of navigation yet. Any slob could find the Gulf of Darien, and surely Flora would have her home port on her charts. So he didn’t waste time asking Maria, again, where they were going. He didn’t see why she was still sitting there beside him, her bare back braced against the cockpit coaming as she sat with her firm brown thighs apart. Like most local Indians, she had no pubic hair. He didn’t ask her if she shaved or plucked between the legs. She wasn’t really ugly, but the constant scowl she wore under her black bangs discouraged any romantic notions, despite her provocative notions of feminine attire.
His silence must have provoked her. She had to say something. So she said, ‘You are a pirate, and when they catch you they are going to hang you.’
He didn’t answer.
She said, ‘Your friend says la señorita Flora and her pearls were seized by others and that you two seized this ketch for to keep them from stealing it too. If you were really friends of La Señorita, for why did you not go after the men who kidnapped her instead, eh?’
He said, ‘They had too good a lead on us. If they were merely jewel thieves, by now your mistress is dead or wishing she were. If British Intelligence was after her and just grabbed the goodies for practice, they’ll probably turn both her and her jewelry loose after she tells them what they want to know. Either way, it makes more sense for us to get down to New Dunmore poco tiempo and warn her friends they could be in trouble. We’d play hell finding one missing redhead in the slums of Limón. Her clansmen might have some ideas on the subject and—’