Calamity (Captain Grande Angil Mysteries)

by Robert G. Bernstein

  “Not that big a leap after you tried to kill me,” I said.

  “Yeah, shit, you ain’t supposed to live through that?” He laughed. There was some drool in the corner of his mouth.

  I walked aft, kept my eyes squarely on Hadley and opened the door. From the cockpit I waved to Aaron in the parking lot. I waited for him start the engine, then I went back inside, grabbed Hadley by the arm and yanked him out of the seat. “You painted a big target on your back the minute you skipped,” I said. “Who was Hadley?”

  “Hadley?” he shouted. “How should I know? Some dumb grunt. Killed in action over there. Hey, I bet it was that big nigger helped you outta the jam in South Carolina. Was it? Tell me. Huh? Zeke? That who it was?”

  “Shut up,” I said, squeezing his arm harder. “We have a plane to catch.”

  Aaron pulled the rental to the dock. He reached over the front seat and opened the back door. Hadley went in head first and I pushed him across to the far side of the seat, climbing in after him and shutting the door behind me. When he heard the door close Aaron put the car in gear and headed through the boat storage area. At the marina’s exit I glanced up and saw Aaron’s eyes in the rear view mirror. They were angry, vengeful eyes.

  “Do you know who I am Mr. Mellville,” he said.

  “Aaron,” I said. “We had a deal.”

  “My name is Hadley, young man,” Hadley said. “James Hadley.”

  Aaron turned onto Long Bay Highway and accelerated. He was driving kind of fast. He had his eyes glued to Hadley in the rear view mirror but now looked at me.

  “What are you trying to pull here, Angil?”

  “Aaron,” what did I tell you about talking?”

  Hadley was humming something and looking out the window as if he were on a Sunday drive in the country.

  “Are you Preston Mellville?” Aaron said to Hadley.

  “Preston Mellville is dead,” Hadley said. “I killed him.”

  “You killed him?” Aaron said.

  We were doing about fifty on the straight away and still accelerating.

  “Aaron, damnit,” I said. “Slow down.”

  “What’s going on here, Angil?”

  “It’s Mellville, Aaron. Trust me. He’s out of his mind on Rohypnol. Now slow the fuck down.”

  Aaron yelled at Hadley. “God Damnit! Are you Mellville?

  “Mellville, Hadley. Hadley Mellville.” Hadley was delirious.

  We were going fifty-five or sixty miles per hour now, headed straight for the canal. I didn’t have any choice. I reached into my pocket and took out the Halothane, poured some on the sleeve of my blazer and pressed my forearm and jacket sleeve into Aaron’s nose and mouth. Aaron struggled for a few seconds and the rental sped up and left the road. It crashed through scrub and brush and came to a top about three car lengths from the highway. The whole time I was fighting with Aaron I never felt Hadley biting into my left arm and grabbing for the Wembley that was tucked in my pants, nor did I realize I had elbowed him in the face and knocked him unconscious.

  I dragged Aaron out of the front seat and placed him next to Hadley in the back. Sick of the whole damn mess, and to be on the safe side, I dosed Hadley with a little Halothane. I gave Aaron another dose, too. Then I duct taped their hands and legs. Not heavily, just enough to hold them until I got to the airport, about ten miles away.

  Fortunately, we were off the beaten track. I was able to rock the car fore and aft and get it out of the scrub and back on the road without anyone else the wiser. The car had fresh dents and scratches and a hole in the muffler and I had to drive through the middle of the Turks and Caicos biggest city. To avoid any additional snafus I took my time and kept under the twenty mile per hour speed limit.

  Provo International is your typical single runway, island airport. It has one, metal trussed main terminal for commercial passenger arrivals and departures, customs inspections, gift shop, food kiosk, etc., and a few large outbuildings for private planes and commercial cargo carriers. Most of the latter are off the Old Airport Road. Where I needed to go was past the Royal Turks and Caicos Police Force Headquarters building and not quite as far as the office building and hangar that Mellville Aviation used, a tight squeeze if there ever was one.

  I pulled into the most out of the way parking spot I could find and prepared myself and my two passengers for the trip. I had two in tow instead of just one and had no choice but to drive them directly to Hollyoake’s private jet, which I could see no more than one hundred fifty yards away on the tarmac. It was fueled and ready to go, the door was open, and both the pilot and copilot were waiting for me at the foot of the boarding ladder. So close and yet so far.

  Before we could board the jet I needed to pass a perfunctory security screen at the terminal facility for charter aircraft. I couldn’t leave Hadley and Aaron in the car alone, couldn’t take them both in the same wheelchair, and couldn’t ram through the eight foot tall swinging chain link fence blocking my entrance to the tarmac. I had to finesse my way in.

  I reached in back and retrieved the three passports from Aaron’s belly pack. The next step was the easiest and, I figured, guaranteed to make it less painful for me if my plan failed. I walked to the back of the car, opened the trunk, took out my suitcase, the wheelchair, and my emergency bottle of Captain Morgan’s. Celebrating my good health and the Royal Crown, I drank a quarter of the bottle. For good measure, I spilled some on my shirt and pants. I then tossed the Wembley and the bullets into the scrub behind the parking lot.

  Hadley went in the wheelchair, my suitcase went on his lap, and the three-quarters full bottle of rum went on the shelf of his belly, between the suitcase and his sternum. I removed the duct tape from his hands and feet and gave him another little whiff of Halothane. As I was about to turn my attention to Aaron I looked back at the bottle. What the hell? I unscrewed the cap and gave Hadley a generous sip. Most of it went down his shirt.

  I could have left Aaron and probably should have but I had been hired to find out what happened to him and damn if I was going to let him get out of my sight now. His tape came off, too, and then I hoisted him out of the car and over my shoulder.

  Pushing Hadley ahead of me in the wheelchair, with Aaron over my shoulder, I stumbled and yawed my way to the front of the terminal. It was a walk of about fifty yards and I had a hell of a time keeping one foot in front of the other. Finally, and I’m not sure how, I managed to reach the front door and walk through to the receptionist and uniformed officer at the boarding gate.

  “Yes, sir,” I yelled, slurring my words. “Three to board Flight . . . ahhh . . . I don’t know to . . . oh shit, I don’t know that either.” I pretended to almost fall over and the agent reached out to steady me. “Wait, yeah . . . now I remember. We’re going home. Yes, Sir. Madame. Damn. Back to The States. Oh . . . I don’t want to go,” I cried. “But I have to. On that thing.” I pointed through the south side window at Hollyoake’s plane, the only one on the tarmac.

  Both the girl behind the counter and the customs agent, or maybe he was a police officer or a security guard, looked throughly disgusted. The man walked over to me.

  “Sir, how did you get here?”

  “Took a cab,” I said. I went to the wrong place. “Way, way, way, way down there. . .” I pointed with my chin.

  “You walked all the way here from the main terminal? With that man on your shoulder?” He was incredulous.

  “If you can call it walking,” I said. “Do you mind? This guy is heavy. How about I just drop him here and maybe come back later? I could use a nap. You know, we didn’t get much sleep last night . . . or the night before.”

  The agent studied me carefully. He checked out Hadley, then bent down to look at Aaron’s face. He was a handsome black man in his thirties, tall, impeccably dressed with sharp creases in freshly washed and ironed clothes, wearing khaki shorts and a khaki shirt with emblems and epaulets.

  “Passports,” he said.

  “In my pocket,” I said.r />
  He reached into my breast pocket and took out the passports, studied them one at a time and compared them to our faces, then he asked me for my tickets or boarding passes.

  “Back pocket,” I said.

  He didn’t want to but he reached into my back pocket and pulled out the pilot’s business card. God, I was really starting to love the Turks and Caicos and the people who lived here.

  “No ticket,” I said. “We’re the only ones.”

  He looked at me and squinted, then looked at the card and said, “Wait here.”

  “Easier said then done,” I mumbled.

  The customs agent went to the exit door and whistled to the pilot and copilot. He whistled really loud and waved his arms as if he had an emergency on his hands. The pilot and copilot took hold of their caps and came at a gallop.

  Five minutes later the copilot was pushing Hadley in the wheelchair and the pilot was assisting me with his arm around my waste. We were halfway across the tarmac. Just before we reached the plane the pilot turned to me and said, “I thought The Senator made it clear we were to have no part in anything you were doing other than flying you from Point A to Point B.”

  “Roll with it, Captain,” I said. “I promise I won’t say anything if you don’t.”

  The copilot sniffed the air around us and made a face. “You guys smell like a distillery.”

  “Give me a break.” I said. “I’m on vacation.”

  Just then, Aaron woke up.

  “Oh shit,” he said groggily. “I think I’m gonna hurl.”

  He did, too. All over the pilot.

  50

  We were parked next to Zeke’s stretch limo in the turnaround at my house on the river, hidden from view by a stand of arborvitaes. Zeke and Jenny were waiting inside. I hadn’t told either one of them anything, other than to say I had returned safely to the States with Mellville—a.k.a. Hadley, who was now in Federal Custody—and wanted to meet to give them a full report. I offered to see them anywhere. They chose to come to my house.

  It was a clammy April afternoon. A thick and persistent fog hung beyond the bight of the cove like a blanket of doom. The whole atmosphere was creepy and foreboding, not a breath of wind, the air dripping with a wetness you could smell and taste. Everything had a scent, the Rover of oil and old rubber and vinyl and rotting floorboards, the soil and the woods around the house of decaying bark and leaves. Mosquitos were spawning in stagnant puddles and water holes. Worms and ants were on the move. Birds were too busy building nests to chirp. A strange, eerie silence had the whole peninsula in a grim embrace.

  Aaron stared straight ahead at an imaginary spot somewhere between the front window of the Rover and the big oak tree at the edge of my driveway. He was having second thoughts.

  “It’s up to you,” I said. “You don’t have to do this. You can take my truck, drive back to the airport and fly out of here. I’ll give you the money. You can see her at some time in the future. You want, you can go back to Provo and stay dead for a while. A month or two maybe. Eventually I’ll have to say something. I’ll have to tell her. And I won’t lie to her, Aaron. If she asks, I’ll tell her.”

  “You think it’s safe for me in Provo?” he asked.

  “I talked to the police down there, and the marina. You’re cool. You were abducted. Not your fault. I paid your shipyard bill and covered your berth for another week. You can go back, pick up your boat, sail to the Horn of Africa if you want.”

  He barely nodded, stared out the window. With his left hand he massaged the area on his right wrist where he had the scarring.

  “It’s not what you think, you know,” he said after a while.

  “What do I think?”

  “I’m not mad at her.”

  “I know.”

  “I just needed to make it right before I came back.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “I wanted to fix it.”

  I nodded. We sat for a minute, listened to the silence and the occasional sound of water dripping off the tree limbs.

  “It was my fault, the fire. My fault my father and brother died.” He continued to stare straight ahead, out the window, massaging his wrist. He said the words matter of fact, with no sign of emotion, as if he had simply opened the door to an empty room and let the air out.

  “You were a fuse,” I said. “A thing.”

  We were quiet again. I didn’t know what to say. If he decided to go back to Provo, stay dead, not see his mother, how would I deal with it? I couldn’t lie to her. I couldn’t violate Aaron’s trust, either. I liked the kid, felt for him. In many ways, I saw much of myself in him.

  “How do I accept forgiveness if I can’t forgive myself?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know. You might want to ask your mother that question. Oh, I almost forgot—” I reached in the back for an envelope. “I had the guys at the shipyard gather some of your stuff and mail it here.”

  Aaron took the envelope from my hand and opened it. He poured the contents onto the shelf under the windshield. His coral bead and shark tooth necklace, his braided bracelet, and his earring.

  He smiled. “What makes you think I care about this shit?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He looked at me and grinned. “You don’t know much, do you?”

  “I hear that a lot lately,” I said.

  Aaron took a deep breath and let it out. He donned the necklace and the carved driftwood earring. Took his time doing it, like it was a ritual.

  “Why would my mother need forgiveness?” he said. “She didn’t do anything wrong. She saved my life.”

  I shrugged.

  “Did she?”

  Aaron slipped the bracelet over his scarred wrist. He took another deep breath and let it out. Overhead, the clouds broke and a little sunlight poked through. A robin on a branch somewhere took the cue and chirped. Probably fluffing its feather in the hopes of finding a mate. It was spring, nest-building time, a time for renewal and rebirth.

  I looked at Aaron. He looked at me. He spun the bracelet on his wrist, around and around, then he reached for the flimsy door handle on the passenger side of the Rover and gave it a squeeze. The door opened and he stepped out.

  “OK,” he said, eyeing me from outside of the truck. “What are we waiting for?”