by Lou Cameron
To change the subject and give himself time to think, he turned back to Gage and said, “I’d have to talk it over with my associate, Gaston, sir. Frankly, I don’t know whether you need a professional exterminator or not. Has anybody tried talking to the natives?”
Burton said, “You just met up with them this afternoon, Walker. How conversational did you find the one who killed Montalban?”
“He was sort of unfriendly, come to think of it. But I was thinking about a powwow with the tribal leaders. Even Apache seem willing to chat once in a while if they think you’re making them an offer.”
Gage said, “Black Caribs aren’t Apache. Not even the Christian natives on this island have ever managed a word with them. We’re not utter savages, you know. When we first took over here, we left gifts for them at the tree line. We’ve tried repeatedly to contact them for a discussion of our differences. A local priest even offered to walk into the jungle alone with a cross in one hand and a white flag in the other.”
“What happened?”
“He never came back.”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “Hmm, I would have assumed that they’d at least made the usual demands and speeches about the spirits giving them these lands as long as the grass shall grow and so forth. Do you mean it’s a pure no quarters race war, shoot on sight?”
Burton said, “Exactly, and as you just found out, the so-and-sos are hard to shoot. The one you got was the first time we’ve even managed to verify a kill.”
He glanced at his mother-in-law and chose his words as he added, “Let’s not go into just when he died. The point is that you got him, and we’ve yet to see you in action with your machine guns. Gordo told me you’d said something about our setting them up wrong. I’m perfectly willing to step aside and let you take over.”
Captain Gringo said, “We’ll talk about it later then.”
Alice Burton said, “Oh, why don’t you sup with us this evening, Captain? We’ll be dining at eight and you boys can discuss military strategy in private as long as you like.”
Burton for the first time looked a little uncomfortable. Captain Gringo wondered how often his wife had put him through this, and what he did about it. Being married to the boss’s daughter beat getting one’s own job, but on the other hand, you couldn’t beat your wife, so it evened out.
Captain Gringo said he might drop by but that he wanted to look around some more and see how his friend, Gaston, was. That gave him a good reason to excuse himself from the tea party, so he did.
Webster tagged along as he left the governor’s garden to head into the native quarter. The town was wrapped around the big central green like a squared-off horseshoe, open to the waterfront. The company buildings fronted on the green with other streets onion-peeling in an ever growing horseshoe until they ended in less formal clusters of housing, cleared lots, and gumbo limbo thickets. The Anglo-American and executive Hispanic housing lay to the upwind side of town, with the sugar mill, engine, and machine shops contesting with native shacks for the space downwind.
That was where he was heading. Webster, at his side, said, “I thought we were on our way to see your chum at the infirmary.”
Captain Gringo said, “I was being polite.”
“Oh quite. Bloody bores, those tea parties, eh what?”
“Yeah. I noticed there was only a handful of people there. I thought there were more Anglo-Americans here than that.”
“Oh, there are. But the colonel’s lady is a bit of a snob, for one thing, and prefers intimate teas for another. You won’t be invited tomorrow. She rotates the honor among her victims. We don’t have to attend her court again until everyone has had some of her dreadful tiffin. Takes her nearly a week to poison us all.”
The taller American did some mental guestimation and said, “So there are a couple of dozen off-islanders here in Utopiaton?”
“About seventeen white men and their womenfolk, not counting you and Verrier. Of course, they have to entertain the local gentry from time to time. Just the leading families and, of course, the Papist priest.”
“They’re colored people?”
“Not exactly. Exotic Spanish types. I’ve never quite figured out what a Dago is. I mean, they’re not really niggers, but, dash it all, they could hardly be called white.”
Captain Gringo didn’t want to go into it with the twit. He said, “There’s usually a plaza and marketplace in the towns down here. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Webster said, “You’re headed the right way. The Dagoes use the street across the tracks as their Bond Street or Piccadilly. The town was laid out by a leading architectural firm in London, but the damned Dagoes have no idea of form.”
They followed an alley off the green and crossed the tracks Captain Gringo remembered. He saw the puffing billy train and sugar mill to his left and the loading docks framing a patch of sea to his right. They walked through a block of shabby tin houses apparently inhabited mostly by kids and chickens. Then they were on the real main drag of a real town, no matter how they’d laid it out on paper.
People were like that. Utopian planners never seemed to know how real people liked to live. He remembered all the action back in Washington had been off to one side of the sterile mall and marble tombs, too.
The narrow crowded side street was lined with cantinas, farmacias and bodegas. Native peddlers squatted along the few blank walls to make a post siesta sale before the sun went down, which wouldn’t be long now. Captain Gringo spotted a corner cantina and was about to cross over to it as soon as that carriage coming passed by. It was an open coach and four, driven by an elderly Negro in a high silk hat. Two women were in the back, wrapped in black Spanish lace.
Suddenly, as the carriage drew abreast of the two men, a ragged, cotton-clad figure materialized from the other side, waving a machete.
Webster gasped, “I say!” as Captain Gringo moved forward, grabbing for his shoulder holster. The attacking native leaped aboard the carriage on the far side while the women cowered down in their leather cushioning. The man with the machete wasn’t after their money. He obviously wanted their heads. So as he raised the machete to swing, Captain Gringo fired across the women’s knees and jackknifed the assassin off the far running board with a .38 slug where his belly button used to be.
After that it got sort of noisy. One of the women was wailing like a banshee, the confused coachman was cursing as he fought his rearing horses, and people charged in from every direction, yelling fit to bust. He recognized the fat guard, Gordo, in the crowd, and since Gordo was shouting, “Viva Captain Gringo!” he assumed they weren’t mad at him. But they were stomping the man he’d shot pretty good.
Captain Gringo went up and over the coach, saying, “Excuse me, ladies.” On the far side he fired in the air for attention and shouted in Spanish, “Enough! I want to question him! Sergeant Gordo, move these people back!”
Gordo yelled, “You heard Captain Gringo, you idiots! This is our prisoner you are kicking as if you owned him. Back, I say, before we show you real slaughter!”
Abashed, the peones formed a circle around the mess they’d made of the gut-shot man in the roadway. Someone had already stolen his machete. Captain Gringo dropped to one knee and felt the side of his throat. Then he muttered, “Shit.” The man was dead.
Behind him, a soft sultry voice said, “We are in your debt, señor.”
Captain Gringo stood up and turned around, wishing he had a hat to take off. The face he saw framed in old Spanish lace belonged in a portrait frame. She was obviously pure Castilian with aquamarine eyes, ivory skin, and a ringlet of burnished copper hair curled right in the middle of her forehead. Gordo joined him, to doff his cap and murmur, “I kiss your foot with respect, Dama Luisa. May I present Captain Gringo, as he is called?”
The girl had spoken to him in English, so Captain Gringo said, “I’m Dick Walker, and I’m honored, ma’am.”
“My poor duefia is too upset to thank you properly, Mr. W
alker. But we are both in your debt, nevertheless. Dear Gordo will direct you to our home when it is convenient for you to call and receive the honors due you.”
He didn’t know how to handle that, so Captain Gringo said, “Por nada, my Dama. Have you any idea why that man just attacked you ladies?”
Dama Luisa glanced rather disdainfully down at the battered corpse in the roadway and” said, “I never saw him before. Have you any idea who he might have been, Gordo?”
Gordo shook his head and said, “No, Dama Luisa. He is not from this part of the island, I am certain.”
Captain Gringo turned and took another look. The shabby man had Hispanic features and mestizo coloring. Dama Luisa said, “He does not look like a Carib, Black or Red. But who else is there on Nuevo Verdugo? Are you certain he is not one of the off-island workers that your company imported, Gordo?”
“It is possible, Dama Luisa. But we shall soon know, in that case. What are your orders on this matter, Captain Gringo?”
“I think you’d better take the body to the infirmary and have Sister O’Shay look at it. She’ll know the tests I have in mind as soon as you tell her where you found him. Then see if you can get each foreman of a work crew to take a look at him. With luck, someone may know him and we can start from there.”
Gordo looked uneasy and said, “Forgive me, my Captain, but though you called me Sergeant I have yet to make Lance Corporal.”
“You’re wrong. Colonel Gage just offered me Commandant of the Guard, and I just made you Sergeant.”
“Por favor, I don’t know how to read or write!”
“I’ve seen you twice in action, Gordo. You’ve got some rough edges, but you do what you’re told, and that’s enough for me. So carry on, Sergeant Gordo. We have to get this street cleared and see these ladies on their way.”
Gordo grinned boyishly and began to bluster the crowd back as Dama Luisa murmured, “You are a kind as well as quick-thinking man, Mr. Walker. I have known Gordo all my life. You have made a devoted friend from common clay indeed.”
He smiled back at her and said, “I do mean to drop by your place sometime, but not because you owe me a sandwich. I need to talk to people who know the island. I don’t think Colonel Gage knows much about common clay. When would it be convenient for you and your husband, ma’am?”
She laughed and said, “That’s usually our ploy. I never realized how obvious it must sound to you men. To answer your question, I’m not married. Gordo would have told you I was a widow in any case, but I admire a man who makes direct moves, as long as he’s not too clumsy.”
The older woman at her side, who’d been taking it all in as she decided ‘whether to faint or not, sat up to nudge Dama Luisa and mutter something. Luisa laughed and said, “Tia Consuela thinks we are flirting. Will you tell her we’re not flirting, Mr. Walker?”
“I never lie to a lady, ma’am.”
This time the duefia laughed, too. Dama Luisa said, “I am otherwise engaged this evening, but we’ll expect you just before La Siesta tomorrow. Until then, you know you have our heartfelt thanks. Drive on, Bruno.”
The Negro cracked his whip and the coach and four moved on. Captain Gringo saw that Gordo had enlisted a couple of boys and a burro to carry the body away. He remembered Webster and noticed for the first time that the twittery Englishman was gone. It didn’t surprise him.
Since everything seemed to be getting back to normal, he walked over to the cantina, went in, and sat down at a blue-washed table. The cantina girl said anything he ordered was on the house, and he got the idea somehow, that this included her. But she had a moustache and was sort of shapeless, so he ordered cerveza.
Captain Burton and a quartet of guards found him there, working on his second beer and chatting with the other customers, when they burst in, looking sort of excited.
Burton asked, “What’s up? Webster came in panting about you getting into a brawl over here in the native quarter.”
Captain Gringo said, “I figured he might. Sit down and have a drink. It’s all over. Some clown tried to hack a couple of women with a machete and I sent the body over to the infirmary. By the way, I just promoted Gordo, if you really don’t mind my taking over.”
Burton said, “God no. We both know I’m lousy at the job.” Then he turned to the guards he’d brought and added, “This is your new C.O. Savvy?”
The four guards presented arms and one of them said, “We await your orders, Captain Gringo!”
“Okay, my first order is that we all cool off with cerveza. Stack arms and sit down while I figure our next move.”
Chapter Seven
The dead man wasn’t a zombie. Mab said there was enough alcohol in his blood to get a vampire stinking drunk, and she thought he’d been on opium, too. But he only died once. Captain Gringo’s bullet had given him a good start, but the cause of death was brain damage from the stomping he’d received and no doubt deserved.
They were alone in Doctor Lloyd’s office when she told him all this. The sun was going down and it would soon be night. It seemed incredible that so much had happened since they’d arrived that noon.
Mab was leaning her buttocks on the doctor’s desk while they spoke. He stepped closer and put a hand on each of her hip bones and said, “Well, I’m writing it off as a crazy drunk with no connection to the other troubles. Gaston’s okay, and there’s nothing to do on a moonless night but wait for more light on the subject. So, where’s your bedroom, doll?”
Mab turned her face as he leaned in to kiss her, and he frowned and asked, “What’s wrong?”
She said, “We have to be careful. I’ve already been snubbed by that jumped-up auld Gage woman.”
“Hell, nobody snubbed you, Mab. Webster says they rotate the tea shit. You’ll probably get invited tomorrow or the next day.”
“That’s easy for yourself to say, Dick. You was invited today! I’m a single woman in a tiny nest of gossipy auld bawds. It’s my head I have to be holding up in this little town. You know what they’ll be saying if you spend the night here.”
He parted her thighs under her white linen skirt with his knee and moved closer as he soothed, “Hell, who’s going to tell them? The colored girls working for you won’t talk. And if they do, you’ve got Gaston on them. I know he’s got at least two of them lined up.”
“That’s disgusting. Miscegenation is against the law.”
“Maybe back in the States. Down here folks don’t worry about each other’s complexions as much. Makes for some interesting-looking gals.”
He tried to kiss her again, and again she resisted, saying, “Please don’t, Dick. You’re just teasing us both.”
“What the hell’s going on? Are you a nurse or a nun?”
“You know I want to, Dick. It’s just that I’ve my reputation to consider.”
“Okay, they gave us private quarters in a wing of the headquarters building up the green. It’s getting dark. Why don’t we just go out the back way and …”
“Don’t be silly! We’d get caught for sure, that way!”
He was about to suggest locking the door of the room they were in, but he couldn’t see tearing off a quicky on a desktop when there were beds all over the. place. She was beginning to piss him off. He saw she hadn’t thought ahead when she started her shipboard romance. That eliminated one of Gaston’s suspicions, but it wasn’t doing a thing for his erection.
He was expected at the Burtons’ in an hour or so. He’d wanted to tear off some ass and get his nerves under control before he faced that honey-blonde Alice again.
But, damn it, Mab was making him work too hard for it, considering she’d already been down on him the night before.
Mab shoved him away and said, “Come back later, when everyone has gone to bed, and maybe we can sneak in a little loving if the coast is clear.”
He said, “I think I’ll just read that book about zombies. There sure are a lot of frozen bodies around here.”
She didn’t get it. She said,
“I know. They buried that … that thing we looked at this afternoon. The natives wanted to do something silly with a hardwood stake, but I told them not to.”
“I missed that. Where did you plant our zombie?”
“Over by the town dump. They say they bury suicides there too.”
Then she shuddered and leaned against him, now that he’d stopped trying. Women were like that. She said, “Dick, I’m frightened. I still see that thing, every time I close.my eyes.”
“Well, that’s one of the problems we have to face if we sleep alone.”
“Och, you know I want to doze off naked in your arms, darling. But people talk so ugly.”
“If you say so. Is that why you move around so much, Mab?”
“Dick, what are you after intimating that I’m a loose .woman?”
“I’d hardly call you loose. But I think you worry too much. I get the impression there’s a lot of hanky-panky on this island, but everybody is ever so proper at tea. I don’t think anybody gives a damn who’s screwing whom, as long as it’s not in the middle of the green at high noon. Come on, doll. Let’s get out of this ridiculous vertical position.”
“Maybe later,” she insisted, adding, “come to me at midnight.”
He gave up and chuckled wryly, “I’ll come to thee at midnight, though Hell should bar the way, huh? Okay, Bess the landlord’s daughter, I’ll see if I can stay awake that long, but don’t bet on it. I’ve had a rough day.”
She followed him out and as they said good-bye at the door to the infirmary Mab took his hand, placed it on her starched breast, and said, “I’ll leave a light if the coast is clear.”
He kissed her, but muttered, “Aw shit,” and walked back to his own quarters. He still wanted Mab, but he didn’t understand this new act, and no mortal woman was worth jumping through hoops over. They usually waited a month at least before they started playing games. That was probably why everyone called it the honeymoon. She’d somehow gotten on a faster track. She dragged him into bed minutes after picking him up, so now she was having the vapors about it ahead of time, too.