“Get in!” He barked at Yarey.
She, like Junior, had a frozen look as she walked over zombie-like and got into the car. Her father glared at me a moment. Before the door slammed shut, all I saw was the reflection of Mojo’s surfboard sign in the dark tint.
“Does this happen often?” I asked Anna.
“Yeah, it happens. Shit happens. These men.” She jumped up, threw the remainder of the joint into an ornamental hedge and declared, “Let’s get back to it.” She took my hand and dragged me back inside where we danced and drank.
Mojo’s closed at eleven. We went to Junior’s house and snuck into the backyard. It was so quiet you could hear the ants digging holes.
“Your family turn in early every night?” I asked.
“No, but recently everyone seems to be doing their own thing. Whether they go out, isolate in their room, or whatever. Harold’s probably out with some girl.”
He went to the kitchen and brought out a bottle of brandy. We sipped it and watched the stars in the impossibly black sky. Anna dozed off on a lounge chair, her hair gently swaying like a palm in the ocean breeze. The perfumed scent of a flower drifted by.
“Wasn’t Herbie sending you back to school soon?” I asked Junior.
“He threatens.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but stopped himself. “He’s not a good guy,” Junior mumbled in a drunken, half-asleep tone.
“Your father?”
“Gilroy, man. He’s ... I don’t know ... not right or something and I should know.”
“I’m gonna need more than that.”
“Well, just last few years really, he got hotter.”
“Perhaps he was always like that, just got less interested in hiding it. Frustration can do that.”
“Frustration?”
“I get the feeling he was promised something by one of your grandparents that he never got.”
“Like what?”
“You think Harold or the others would know?”
“I’ll ask and get back with you tomorrow.”
BACK AT THE MANNER, Lucy lounged on the enclosed porch upstairs. She shuffled cards absentmindedly by the light of a kerosene lamp. It reminded me of an old painting housed in the The Getty Center Museum of a philosopher-scientist studying the orbits of the planets with a compass by a single candle.
“You’re up late,” I said as I cut through to get to my room. She nodded. I stopped. The breeze buoyed me as I leaned against the wooden railing. Crickets chirped in the light breeze of dark morning.
Below us, Charlotte Amalie spread away to the black sea at Waterfront. Even in a small place like St. Thomas, there were always lights dotting the hillsides or peeking out of buildings at all hours. A stripped metal awning extended over the porch that could be lowered during hurricanes for added metal protection from the cataclysmic winds.
Strangely, I felt comfortable here with my landlady, amongst the chirping crickets and soft shuffle of her Bicycle cards. Lucy and Marge hosted a friendly poker game on Wednesday nights for the guests and a few close friends. Lucy dealt and Marge filled drinks and food orders. The bar-restaurant had recently begun to get busier with non-guesthouse patrons as word spread about the happy hour and good food at reasonable prices.
“This private detective from Georgia asked about a poker game this week. Should I have sent him over?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. We got da people we like. Might be we need to hire a cook or a waiter,” she said. “Marge don’t like that idea.”
“Why not?”
“She like it just be us.”
“I get that,” I said, shifting my weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. My knee ached from dancing.
“But we growin’ and I tired of doin’ everything myself. This business ain’t easy, you know.”
“If you want my opinion, hire a bartender or waiter, not a cook. You and Marge are already too good at that.”
She smiled, never looking up from the cards in her lap. “That’s nice for you to say, Boise. But cook is the cheapest. Besides, I don’t want give up tips.”
How could I argue with that? I was tired but not sleepy. Too many factors rattling around, and I still didn’t have the hold on things I had hoped to have by now. Was it the family? Was it someone in the business? Was Francine’s killing simply an accident followed by Kendal’s because he had figured something out? If that was the case, why hadn’t he gone straight to the police, rather than set up a meet with Junior. All illogical, but then again, human beings were illogical. The killings had to be related.
“Me don’t like the night,” Lucy said above the quiet din of her shuffling.
“Why don’t you turn on some more lights? It’ll feel less like night.”
Lucy did a thing where she fanned out the cards and popped one out of the deck. She could do things with cards like some of the magicians.
I was about to ask where she learned to do that, when she said, “Lights don’t take away the night. Trying to pretend it’s not night impossible. I don’t see the night, I feel the night. It heavy. Me don’t like it. It’s why I can’t sleep. I sit up, waiting for it to be over.”
Chapter 26
The mixed drinks at Mojo’s were made with cheap liquor. Really cheap liquor. I could usually drink any damn thing and a lot of it. My eyes felt like there were tiny strings with tiny dumbbells hanging off the tiny strings pulling down on my eyelids. It felt like that all damn day. Coffee didn’t help. A cold shower didn’t help—it may have even made me sleepier.
Slapping myself only made my eyes bulge, causing Lucy to comment that I looked more intense than usual as I walked through the lobby on the way out. Despite having still been on the porch shuffling cards when I went to sleep the night before, she was chipper as a cheerleader. Some people never seemed to get tired. I envied those people.
The sugar in the doughnut from Island Bakery helped slightly, but the stifling tropical heat countered the positive effect. Relentless sunshine—oh the humanity. Tugging my hat lower, I had to squint under the brim to keep from walking into people.
I trailed a tour group into the Bacon Distillery, breaking off as we approached Gilroy’s office. At the bottom of the stairs someone hollered my name. Yarey. She had dumbbell-eyes, too.
“Long night?” I asked.
“Amen. Fun, right?”
“You’re fun,” I said playfully. “When’s your next gig?”
“I’m supposed to sub in as a singer at The Normandie next Friday, but he ... ” She nodded up at the office above. “ ... said I gotta stop this nonsense or else.”
“Else what?”
“Probably kick me out.”
“Is he up there?” I asked.
“Probably. I haven’t been checking. I’m fed up. Anna said I could come stay with her. Problem is, he might be right. Singing isn’t much of a living, but what if I’m one of the lucky ones?”
Gilroy was right to be concerned. Yarey wasn’t even the lead singer at a local concert last night, so how the hell was she going to make it in an ocean of talent like New York or L.A.?
Gilroy didn’t look pleased to see me when he opened the door. He reluctantly waved me in.
Sitting down, he slid a book that had been open on his desk to the side along with a small length of rope tied in a knot.
“What you want?”
“Your daughter is talented.”
He remained impassive at this comment. After a time, he said, “She’s throwing her life away.”
“It’s hers to throw away, don’t you think?”
“If you came here to lecture me on the importance of letting children experiment and follow their dreams, you can save your breath. Here,” he held his arms wide, “we live in reality. We need money. We need to build something. That takes time and at my age you become aware how little time there is. If she goes off ... ” He banged a fist on his
orderly desk. “What do you want? I have work to do.” He pondered his watch. “We have a tasting in twenty minutes.”
“Then I’ll keep it short,” I shot back. “Were you promised something by Dominic before Francine took over the business?”
Having worked for lawyers in Los Angeles, I’d picked up a couple of interrogation techniques. Most of the time, the attorneys I worked for asked questions in their own clients’ offices or the opposition’s office or at home where the person being deposed felt most at ease. A less formal atmosphere resulted in fewer guardrails or preparation. If you could show up unannounced and get answers, all the better. Divorce cases, my firm’s bread-and-butter, involved a ton of lying.
The best way to spot a liar, contrary to popular belief, was not knowing the tells. Tells were nice, but could be misinterpreted. A common tell is when the person won’t make eye contact, then most times there’s a lie or half-truth going on, but on the other hand, some people are exceedingly shy and hated making eye contact, even when being truthful.
The ideal scenario was to know the answer to the question you were asking. In the courtroom, this rule supplanted all others on cross-examination. “Don’t know answer, don’t ask question.”
I waited for him to answer the question, but Junior had already called me with the answer. Junior had done his own snooping and he had a lot more access to his grandparent’s inner workings than I did.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So, Dominic Bacon, the owner of this business, made no promises to you prior to his demise that weren’t fulfilled by Francine Bacon?”
“No. Francine has been fair and generous. She’s giving me half-a-million dollars and doing the same for my daughter.”
He picked up the bit of rope that looked like it was tied in a slipknot and dropped it into a drawer, then stood up formally. He didn’t look at me, which reinforced what I already knew. The man was lying, but why?
Once outside, I called Junior.
“Are you sure Harold knows what he’s talking about?”
“Yes, Harold’s sure.”
From a stump in the shade I watched a butterfly flit about in the hazy heat. The grassy area behind the distillery was littered with hedges that hadn’t been cut for too long. The areas in front and on the sides were properly mown and trimmed, probably because of the tours. No one came back here except workers, as evidenced by a bucket of sand with dozens of cigarette butts protruding from it.
Who kept an eye on Gilroy Antsy now that Francine Bacon was out of the picture? Was there a new CEO who took over upon her demise? There must be some kind of contingency in the case of illness or death, although this was a closely-held company, so they could presumably do whatever they wanted. And there was nothing like the Securities and Exchange Commission to hold them accountable. On top of it all, we were on an island notorious for poor governmental oversight.
If there was no one new in charge, that left Gilroy to his own devices. He would manage things until someone else was brought in. Francine must have trusted this man to leave him in charge of the rum operation, although that was small molasses compared to the sugar. Then again, if the whole thing was now for the reparations, what did it matter? Would it be dismantled? There were a lot of moving parts in Francine’s life, a lot of people with things to gain and things to lose upon her death.
Movement on the side of the building. Gilroy came out and moved into a corner of the property where a pair of saw horses stood at the ready. A board was propped against the wall along with a hand saw. His back was to me.
Sneaking closer, I positioned myself behind a pillar with hunks of brick protruding from ancient, powdery plaster. He pulled out a measuring tape, consulted a slip of paper from his pocket, then marked a length of the board and proceeded to cut. Once the cut was complete, he measured the board again and sanded the rough edge for a couple minutes.
He walked back to the parking lot and dumped the wood into the back of his sedan before re-entering the building. Less than two minutes later he exited again, hopped into his sedan and raced off.
Sprinting out to the main road, I hailed a cab that had just dropped off a group of gawking tourists. He sure had an odd way of preparing for a tasting.
“Follow that pearl Mercedes,” I yelled.
“Hold on, da man,” the cabbie said casually.
I blew out an annoyed stream of air as I waited for him to make change and collect his tip from the previous fare. Out on Veterans Drive I directed him to turn right, but the sedan had already disappeared into traffic. We caught the first light.
“Where’s the nearest marina?” I asked.
“Marina? Mi son, I don’t know nothing about marinas. I look like a sailor? Where we going?”
Looking around desperately, I had him pull over. I searched in my phone for marinas. The closest one was only about a mile away where Veterans curved inland as you left the waterfront. There were seven others.
WE STOPPED AT YACHT Haven Grande, which was located in Havensight. It moored large yachts for the most part, hence the name. According to the security guard at the gate, they typically didn’t take boats. They took ships since they could accommodate up to four-hundred feet. They were also very prestigious because of their proximity to downtown and the main harbor.
“Everything is close. You go out to Sapphire or Boat Hawk, you’ll find more of the local flavor. Is this guy major league?”
“What’s major league?” I asked the muscular guard sporting a flat-top.
“Is he a hot-shot business guy or Brad Pitt?”
“No. He’s a guy who works and lives here with an upper management job making rum.”
“That’s guppy-class. I put him at Sapphire or Fish Hawk. Under fifty feet and maybe barely six.”
“Six?”
“Figures. You gotta be high six or seven and up for these real places.”
We headed for Fish Hawk. The place was dead. A couple of drunk sailors lounged around in a hut that passed for a bar at the end of a poorly maintained dirt and gravel road. Four small boat slips were occupied by vessels of dubious seaworthiness, all badly in need of barnacle scraping. One appeared to be taking on water.
I watched and waved to a dingy that motored through the channel between the mangroves and the shoreline, then asked one of the bleary-eyed loungers if he had seen a Mercedes come by. This elicited a toothless laugh followed by an extended fist, which I dutifully bumped.
We slalomed along Bovoni Road to Red Hook where the ferry for St. John anchored. I paid the cabbie and dismissed him since Red Hook had taxis on every corner.
Before combing the area for the Mercedes or Gilroy, whatever came first, I bellied up to the bar, ordered my Guinness and their Cheeseburger in Paradise with onion rings. I doused everything in ketchup and chugged the beer. As I got up to leave, I spotted him at one of the tables, his back to the door, as he chatted up an angry man who looked vaguely familiar. Where did I know Gilroy’s table-mate from? I suspected it was his outfit. Gilroy’s companion wore some strange glasses that looked like goggles ala James Worthy and a knit cap. Whoever he was, he appeared to be undercover. His baggy attire, made it hard to determine a body type. As I considered the companion’s identity, I realized I’d made a mistake not wearing my own hat for the first time in weeks.
Slipping out, I jogged across the parking lot to the Marina Market and purchased a St. Thomas baseball cap and four-dollar Ray-Ban knockoffs, all the while watching to make sure they didn’t disappear on me.
Feeling suitably concealed, I perched on a different seat at the bar that offered a better view. I pretended to take a selfie with the Duffy’s Love Shack heart logo hanging on one of the wooden stanchions, but snapped Gilroy and his friend instead. The light was poor, so the photo could only serve as a general reminder, perhaps a means of getting an ID on Gilroy’s companion later. It certainly wasn't worthwhile evid
ence in any criminal proceeding.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, I thought. This might be nothing more than him meeting a friend in the middle of the work day just to hang out.
The bartender, a small woman with an emo hairdo, cutoff jeans, and a plaid, sleeveless shirt, sauntered over. She had the gait of a cowboy in chaps who’d dismounted from a horse five minutes earlier.
“Are you Boise?” she asked.
The disguise didn’t seem to be working. Whatever the two men were discussing, they were engrossed. I shifted position so I could look at her and watch Gilroy out of the corner of my eye.
“That’s my name. Who are you?”
“I know Irene.”
“Who’s that?” I immediately regretted the question.
“I’m gonna tell her you say that,” the bartender said, her hands positioned on her hips like Wonder Woman and her voice rising.
I pulled her closer, realizing people were starting to pay attention. “Sorry, sorry. You mean that Irene.”
“That’s what I say.”
I shook my head apologetically. “My bad. I thought you said Ilene.”
“Serious? You think I dumb?” She pulled out her phone and started texting. “I going tell she about you. What you doin’ out here?”
Her theatrical volume was drawing more and more attention from patrons in the bar. People loved to watch a man and woman fight.
“Hey, uh ... ” I searched for a name tag, but Duffy’s was too casual for that, “ ... Miss, please don’t tell Ilene, I mean, Irene, you saw me. Please.”
“You do that to me friend after she put herself out to you and you expect me to respect your wishes? You can’t treat a woman like that.” Her head was shaking back and forth so rapidly, I wondered how she didn’t get dizzy. Over her shoulder I saw Gilroy’s eyes narrow as he studied my countenance. Even with sunglasses and a hat, a hint of recognition crossed his face and then blossomed into full realization.
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