Venom: A Thriller in Paradise (The Thriller in Paradise Series Book 3)

by Swigart, Rob

  FOURTEEN

  A NICE, QUIET NIGHT

  It was a fine winter night in the tropics. Scorpio curled through the Milky Way overhead. The Southern Cross tilted on its side a little farther to the west. All the stars were unfamiliar, but the air was soft with the distant surf against the outside of the reef and the after-stirrings of the day’s sunlight rising from the pavement. There was no moon.

  “A nice, quiet night,” Cobb said. “Like home.”

  “Different stars.”

  “Yeah. Different.”

  Although it was just a little after nine, the town was somnolent. Cars were infrequent on the main street, rare on the side streets. One or two small restaurants showed lights, the outlines of people inside. The harbor was silent, fishing boats floating on black glass under a single street lamp. No lights in the cabins. Against the outer pier, a large cargo boat was tied. It too was dark.

  Duvalois nodded. “A couple of errands,” he murmured. “See you later.” He ambled away to the main street and turned left.

  “You suppose he’s staying at the hotel, too?” Chazz asked.

  Cobb nodded. “Not that many hotels on this island. A couple of small resorts, a pension or two. This place in town, Le Motu, is more or less it.”

  “He seems pretty sloppy for a cop. You think he’s legitimate?”

  Takamura laughed. “This is the end of the world. He said so himself. Probably not the most exciting post for a security officer. I imagine they don’t assign their top people to Polynesia. The pace here seems a little… slow? Casual. Maybe he got lazy. It happens on islands.”

  “Didn’t happen to you.”

  “No. But I was born there.”

  They strolled along the waterfront. Across a shallow bay, they could see the hospital, its rooms lit up. It looked like a cruise ship in the night against the black hills.

  Suddenly, loud music started up in the middle of town. It stopped a moment, then started again. This time it kept going.

  “I’m afraid that’s from our hotel,” Chazz said.

  “No!”

  “Yes. There’s a disco downstairs.”

  “A disco? Where have these people been? I thought disco went out in the seventies.”

  “These are the tropics,” Chazz said, as if that explained everything.

  “Oh, of course. These are the tropics.” Cobb echoed. They walked on.

  “Wait.” Takamura stopped to look at his friend. “Are we too old for disco?”

  “Never too old for disco, Lieutenant.”

  “A disco might be a good place to meet people,” Cobb suggested.

  “And you a married man. Tsk-tsk.”

  “Most amusing, Dr. Koenig.” They walked slowly. At the corner they could see a gathering outside the hotel, a surreal mix of Chinese, Tahitians, and Caucasians in assorted clothing. Most, but by no means all, were young.

  Four men walked down the street with an unnatural wariness. Chazz watched them go inside. One of them had a thick scar on his neck, under his right ear. The scar connected the lobe to the skin of the neck. They were hard-looking men, trouble, going inside. Then they were gone.

  “Military, I’d bet,” Chazz said.

  “You noticed? Not friendly, I’d say.” Takamura dismissed them.

  They drifted in among the crowd. A few motorbikes were leaning on their stands at the curb. Three more sputtered into town, driven by fiercely mustached young men with flashing smiles and laughing girls seated behind them, arms around the men’s waists. The three couples went inside. The music was deafening, the lyrics in French. A painted sign over the right-hand door declared that this was the Disco Onyx. The sign over the left-hand door said Hotel Le Motu. Both doors were open. The hotel door revealed a flight of stairs. The entire hotel was on the second floor.

  “We have the two quiet rooms,” Chazz shouted, all irony lost in noise. “In the back. View of the harbor.”

  “I’m sure they’re lovely,” Cobb answered.

  Someone touched Chazz on his arm. He pivoted swiftly, stepping back and to one side, his hands rising, a gesture quickly turned into stroking his beard when he saw the complete absence of threat from the small man before him. “Dr. Koenig?” the man said.

  He had a gray goatee and thick spectacles. Spindly arms dangled from the flapping short sleeves of a bilious-green shirt, and he seemed to twitch frequently. “I’m sorry, Dr. Koenig. They said you were here. The only one who could be you was you.”

  “Oh.”

  The man spoke English with a generous helping of Texas. Intelligent eyes glittered behind his glasses, which reflected the garish neon from inside the disco. “You like disco?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Freddie Barrone. Dr. Morgan, from the DRC up in Kauai, he said you’d contact me?”

  “Of course. Vitamins and oysters. You have a new process. I thought we were meeting tomorrow.” Chazz stepped aside for a group of clean-shaven Frenchmen here on vacation. They disappeared into the smoke and noise.

  “Yes, but I thought since you were here, and I was here anyway, I might look you up tonight. I mean, I heard about Gérard and all, and I thought you might be busy or something, but here you are.”

  “Who’s Gérard?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Queneau. Wonderful man, why anyone would want to kill him, I don’t know, he was very helpful to the farm— that’s the oysters, you know. We’re mainly tryin’ to get vitamin E out of the seaweed, but the oysters like to have it around, so we thought we could cultivate pearls too, you know, Polynesia’s famous for black pearls?”

  An overweight man in a T-shirt came out of the disco and started up one of the motorcycles parked in front. They had to suspend the conversation until he roared away toward the airport. Barrone smiled painfully through it.

  “So you knew Mr. Queneau?”

  “Sure. Everyone knew Gérard. He was the judge, more or less retired of course, but still he acted as a kind of ombudsman, for the people here, you see. It’s difficult sometimes to get through the paperwork in Tahiti, ’specially for a foreigner, an American, I mean. They want to keep people out unless they’re tourists bringin’ money, of course, so to get a residency permit, well, it’s hard, and to set up a business, well…”

  “I can understand,” Cobb said.

  “Lieutenant Takamura,” Chazz introduced them. The little man shook both their hands.

  “What I’m sayin’ is that Mr. Queneau helped a lot. He was real interested in the welfare of the native people, French and Tahitian both. Real interested. Everyone loved him, that’s why it’s such a shock.”

  “A native woman killed him,” Chazz said.

  “Yeah, I heard that too. Don’t seem likely, you ask me. Not that she didn’t do it, I suppose she did, but it don’t seem likely if you see what I mean.”

  The song ended; there was a brief pause, punctuated by the sounds of an argument inside, soon drowned out by the next onslaught of music. Chazz gestured that maybe they should take a short walk up the street, away from the noise. Cobb said he was going inside to “get the feel of the place.”

  “It’s not like Takamura,” Chazz told Barrone as they strolled under the overhang along the shops across the street. “Back in Kauai he lives a quiet life.”

  “Japanese, is he?”

  “American,” Chazz said drily.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. Of course. You all are from Hawaii. I got my doctorate at SMU. Botany. My wife’s Tahitian, see, she didn’t care for Texas. Likes it down here, where she’s from, Raïatéa, actually. She works some as a guide, takin’ tourists around the island, see the sights. Love to take you, you got the time. Faaroa, the temples, Temehani, they got some weird flowers grow up there, only place in the world, five petals, called Tiare apetahi, real pretty, make a noise when they open at dawn, bang, bang, white with a semicorolla. Sorry.” He bobbed his head. “Botany, you know.”

  None of Barrone’s ramblings seemed to require acknowledgemen
t, so Chazz changed the subject. “You can’t think of any reason why someone would want to kill Queneau?”

  “Don’t make any sense a’tall. I guess he made enemies along the way, of course. I mean he was the judge. Two or three people might resent him, on accounta’ he sent them to jail for a while. Mostly drunks, though, overnight. They liked him, too, see. They knew he was fair. Unusual in a Frenchman, huh? He was considerate to everyone. Mostly though, just fair. So no, I can’t think of anyone, less it was someone he had a run-in with wasn’t from the island. There was a guy before that boat left.”

  “Ocean Mother?”

  “That’s right. Some fellow from the crew got into it with Queneau. Don’t know what it was about, but then he left, so it couldn’t have been him anyway. Sorry, I don’t know why I brought it up.”

  “No, no, that’s interesting. What do you know about the woman, the one who is supposed to have killed Queneau?”

  The little man shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t know anything much about her, ‘cept she’s from down south, other end of the island. I got these farms up here, see, around the west side. Seaweed does better over there, sheltered from the trades, oysters like it too, a little sheltered bay.”

  He was about to get started again. “We could talk about that tomorrow, I suppose,” Chazz suggested. “I should get back. Like I said, the lieutenant isn’t used to going to discos. Kauai’s a small island. Discos only for tourists. He can go now he’s a tourist.”

  “Oh, well, sure.” Barrone was disappointed, but he brightened immediately. “Hell, I’ll join you. You might need an interpreter or something. I told you my wife’s Tahitian, didn’t I? I do speak the lingo pretty well.”

  “Fine.” They turned around and walked back. More motorbikes were arriving. Things were picking up. It was nearly ten o’clock.

  The music was a wall of noise and popping lights, the small room crowded. A few couples squirmed on the tiny dance floor. The sound of conversation was almost equal to the amplified music. Bottles of Hinano passed overhead in a constant tangle of traffic.

  Cobb Takamura was at the far end of the bar, pressed against the wall. A neon beer ad with a faulty transformer sizzled and spat above his head, its message illegible, red and blue light spilled onto his porkpie hat in random spurts. If anything the hat appeared even more hideous than usual. Thick smoke filled the top half of the room. Chazz pushed his way through the crowd like an oil tanker in heavy seas. His bulk was impressive enough to move even the most reluctant. The crowd moved aside cheerfully.

  The four French soldiers were lined up, backs to the bar, waving beer bottles at a heavyset Tahitian woman wiggling her tight skirt at them. They shouted something incoherent and spilled from the bottles. Sticky beer splashed on the floor.

  “Excuse me,” Chazz said, pushing in front of them toward Takamura.

  “Hien?” The man with the scar on his neck put out his hand and blocked Chazz. He said something in rapid-fire French. Chazz smiled and pushed past the hand. The other three moved forward, away from the bar.

  “Your friend?” the scarred man asked, jerking his thumb toward Takamura. “Little Nip?”

  Chazz stopped. “What?”

  “Your friend, the yellow man?”

  Chazz frowned. “You don’t have Japanese tourists here?”

  The four men found this question hilarious and slapped each other on the shoulder and back. Cobb was busy watching the dancers. “Sure, sure,” the first one said. “They bring much money, hien? But he is not tourist.” His words were slurred, and Chazz could barely make out what he was saying over the blare of the loudspeakers.

  Chazz smiled and pointed to his ear, I can’t hear. He pressed ahead again, and the hand that was blocking him pushed back. Again Chazz stopped. “I wouldn’t like to have any trouble here,” he said. He could feel the old anger stirring.

  “Sorry,” the Frenchman said. The one now behind Chazz suddenly jabbed him in the kidney.

  “Ooh, ooh, so sorry, M’sieur. Someone pushed me.” He was grinning. It was an unpleasant expression, full of venom.

  The space was cramped. No one had room to swing. Punches would be useless, but if they had knives, the closeness would give them an advantage.

  Chazz turned left, facing them. “What do you want?” he asked mildly, but the anger was uncoiling like a snake in his stomach. Someone might get hurt. Chazz hoped it would not be him.

  “We heard you and your Nip friend were interested in the boat.” The second soldier, a wiry man with dark hair who might have been Algerian, spoke better English and the insult came through clearly.

  “So?” Chazz asked. Takamura was still leaning against the wall watching the dancing and did not appear to have noticed the scene unfolding to his own left.

  “Ha-ha.” The soldier laughed thickly. “Everyone dead, yes? Very funny.”

  He lashed out with his foot at that instant and caught Chazz painfully on the side of the calf. The soldier next to him punched toward his face and Chazz, off balance from the kick, flinched back. For some reason, his own foot flew up and caught the second soldier under the ribs. The soldier bent over just as Chazz straightened, which allowed the man behind him to punch empty air as Chazz said, “Oh my gosh, are you all right. I slipped.” He pivoted then in the small space and found an arm extended in front of his eyes. He held his own hand edge out and as he turned, slid his hand down to the hand at the end of this arm, cupped the fist there in his own palm and bent the wrist back on itself. The soldier gave a yelp of surprise as Chazz folded the man’s arm into a Z, caught the back of the hand with his thumb, and twisted the wrist down against the inside of his forearm. The soldier, a thick-necked blond, dropped to the floor with a shout of pain.

  “Oh, gosh,” Chazz bent as if to help him up and fourth soldier, a prematurely balding man with a wrestler’s body, who was uncoiling behind Chazz to seize him in a choke hold, found himself falling forward with nothing to hold. He flew over Chazz’s shoulder and landed on one of the tiny round tables. Everyone at the table leaped back, and the table toppled as Chazz turned again and gave the soldier a small push to assist his fall.

  Intense pain shot up his leg as the third soldier kicked him again; the kicks were extraordinary, lightning fast and very accurate. Chazz shook his head. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he murmured. He caught a glimpse of Cobb Takamura still leaning against the wall. He appeared to be humming along with the music.

  The space was too crowded. The man with the damaged wrist was climbing to his feet, holding on to a smiling Tahitian man. He turned quickly and lashed at Chazz with his elbow. Chazz swayed to the side, the elbow grazed his cheek, and he came in under the man’s armpit with stiffened fingers. “I really hate to hurt people,” he said, but the anger had uncoiled fully, and he had released it and the sarcasm with it. He stomped heavily on the instep of the soldier behind him, and allowed his own right elbow to go back low. He caught the man on the chin as he doubled over the pain in his foot.

  “Damn,” Chazz said, rubbing his elbow.

  The remaining two men closed in from both sides, pinning him between them, Chazz dropped his weight and slipped away from one, who immediately began punching him with quick short jabs to the kidneys. Chazz spun in the small space, carrying the one holding him in a half circle, so he caught a punch himself before the first stopped. But by then all four of them were all over him.

  He dropped suddenly to the floor, then pushed up in a smooth surge, and the four men fell away. One caught his lower back painfully against the edge of the bar. Someone had picked up the small table, and the wiry Algerian hit it again, sending the beer bottles and glasses on it flying. Everyone in the room seemed to be cheering now.

  One of the soldiers wiped the back of his hand against his mouth and looked at the blood there. Suddenly he grinned at Chazz. “Formidable,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder. He waved at the bartender, and before he knew it, Chazz had a bottle of Hinano in his hand, and the four Fre
nch soldiers were singing the Marseillaise, nearly inaudible over the disco music. They were suddenly very drunk. “Was he not formidable, Jean-Marie?”

  Jean-Marie, the man with the scar on his neck, nodded, drinking hard.

  “Most impressive,” Cobb said in his ear. He still had his porkpie hat on.

  “My leg hurts like hell.”

  “They like a man who can fight in a bar.”

  “They’re a bunch of racist swine,” Chazz said, finishing the beer.

  Cobb shrugged. “Someone sent them after us.”

  “You think so?”

  Freddie Barrone appeared. “Wow,” he said. “That was something.”

  “Where the hell did you disappear to?” Chazz asked gruffly. “You were supposed to interpret.”

  “Looked like you were doing fine. It’s not really in my line, the rough stuff. I’m a botanist.”

  “Yeah. And I’m a biochemist.”

  One of the soldiers asked him what it was he did back then, in the fight. “Aikido,” he said shortly. “Sort of. Not supposed to hurt.”

  “Oh, is all right,” the soldier said “Fat lip, as you say, hien?”

  “Fat lip, okay. Who sent you?”

  His innocence was vast as the universe and false as Monopoly money. “Sent?”

  “Never mind. You know, Freddie?”

  Freddie shook his head on a scrawny neck. “French soldiers come to Raïatéa on R and R,” he said. “New ones all the time. Usually they stay over on the other side. I don’t know these guys.”

  “No harm,” one of them said. He signaled for another round.

  “I suppose not. Did you guys kill the crew of the Ocean Mother?”

  “Very funny man.”

  The soldiers were hilarious. Then they grew sad. They sang a song. It sounded like they were alone, unknown, lost. They had no address. The song was in French, and it was very bleak. Finally they left.

  The noise in the disco grew, if anything, louder. Chazz developed a headache. Fighting was not fun. It was never fun, even when it was in fun. And he did not believe this one had been in fun. He believed it was a warning.

  He and Cobb went up to the lobby. Cobb went off to his room while Chazz tried Patria again, back in Kauai. The phone rang on and on in an empty house. Finally, the operator came on and suggested he try again later, no one was answering. The music pounded through the floor of his room. His leg ached.