Bahama Crisis

by Desmond Bagley

"He's an electronics expert I'll tell you about him later."

  Perigord agreed. I told him I'd be flying back immediately, then hung up and sat at Fletcher's desk and pondered. Was I right? I had seen him only for a matter of seconds, and I had been in a drugged condition at the time. But it had been very close up. Was I right in staking that he was Carrasco? Staking everything on the colour of a man's eyes and the size of his nose?

  I thought I was right. The recent painting session with Cassie Cunningham had clarified my mind and etched that face into my mind's eye. But if I was wrong and Perigord laid on an elaborate operation to no good purpose then he would have an even lower opinion of me than ever.

  Fletcher came back, and I asked, "What's Carrasco's credit card number?"

  "He paid cash. Just dug out his wallet and paid in hundred dollar bills, American. It didn't empty the wallet, either."

  "How much was the bill?"

  "A little over 1100 dollars. He used the restaurant a lot and his bar bill wasn't small. Then there was the car rental charge."

  I leaned back in the chair.

  "Jack, you've been in this business quite a time. When was the last time you can remember that a bill like that was paid in cash?"

  "It's happened a few times," he said.

  "Not many, though. Usually when a man has cleaned up at the casino he gets paid out in cash so he pays his bill in cash. But that's usually in Bahamian dollars."

  "I don't think Carrasco is a gambler," I said meditatively "Not that kind, anyway. I'll take a copy of the bill with me." I felt much more confident and happy.

  I flew back to Freeport and went to see Perigord immediately He had Inspector Hepburn with him, and he came quickly to the point.

  "Tell us more about this man Carrasco."

  I did not do that. Instead, I looked at Inspector Hepburn, and asked, "Do you still think this is about cocaine?"

  Perigord said, "Yes, we do."

  "Well, I don't. Both Kayles and Robinson seemed surprised when I brought up the subject."

  "They would," said Hepburn.

  "They were not likely to admit it, were they?"

  I said, "To my mind their surprise was genuine. It took them aback."

  "But we don't have your mind," said Perigord.

  "I doubt if you would consider yourself an expert on the way criminals behave when confronted."

  I saw I was getting nowhere pursuing that line; their minds were made up.

  "What do you want to know about Carrasco?"

  "Everything," Perigord said succinctly.

  "He kidnapped me from the Cunningham Building," I said.

  "And…"

  Perigord held up his hand.

  "You're sure it's the same man?"

  I hesitated.

  "Not one hundred per cent, but near enough. I don't trust people who pay large bills in cash." I told them of what had happened and put a copy of the bill on Perigord's desk.

  Perigord, too, found that odd. We thrashed it out a bit, then he said, "Mr. Mangan, can we trust your American friends?"

  "In what way?"

  "Can we trust them to stick to surveillance, but not to take action in the matter of Carrasco? Our police force is relatively small and I would welcome their help in keeping tabs on Carrasco, but not to the extent of their taking violent action. That I can't permit."

  "They'll do exactly as I tell them1' " Very well. I have talked to Mr. Walker and he has Carrasco under observation at this moment; and is to report to my man at your hotel.

  Why is Rodriguez coming, and what is he carrying? " I told him and he smiled.

  "Yes, I think we can do with scientific aid."

  Hepburn said, "There's something I don't understand. If Carrasco kidnapped you in Houston isn't he taking a risk by walking openly about your hotels? He could bump into y ou at any time. In fact, you did spot him or so you think." He glanced at Perigord.

  "To my mind this may be a case of mistaken identification. Mr. Mangan admits he only saw the man in Houston for a few seconds."

  "What do you say to that?" asked Perigord.

  "It's been puzzling me, too," I said.

  "But I'm ninety-five per cent convinced it's the same man."

  "Nineteen chances out of twenty in favour of you being correct," he mused.

  "Those are odds I can live with. We'll watch Dr. Carrasco."

  Driving from the police station to the hotel I thought of what Hepburn had said, and came to the conclusion that it could cut both ways. If Carrasco had been the man in Houston then perhaps he was willing to take the chance of me seeing him because I had seen him for only a few seconds. In those circumstances perhaps he thought a beard and moustache were sufficient disguise. As I switched between alternatives my mind felt like a yo-yo.

  A good hotel has two circulatory systems, one for the clientele which is luxuriously furnished, and the other for the staff which has a more spartan decor; and in the best hotels the two systems are mutually exclusive because one does not want maintenance traffic to erupt into the public rooms. When I got back to the hotel I stuck to the staff system because I wanted to keep out of the way of Carrasco Walker reported on Carrasco and related affairs.

  "He's holed up in his room; probably unpacking. Rodriguez will be here in about two hours; I'll have a man at the airport to meet him. Perigord has a man here in the hotel, and he assigned another to your house to guard your wife." He scratched the angle of his jaw, and added sourly, "They're both armed."

  "They're entitled to be," I said.

  "You're not." It was good of Perigord to think of Debbie.

  "You're not to lay a finger on Carrasco.

  Just watch him and report on who he talks to. "

  "Can we tap his room telephone?"

  "It's probably illegal but we'll do it. I'll have a word with the switchboard operator. Carrasco might speak Spanish; do we have anyone who can cope with that?"

  "One two when Rodriguez comes."

  "That should be enough. Any problems, let me know." We knocked it around a bit more, trying to find angles we had forgotten, did not find any and left it at that.

  For the next three days nothing happened. Carrasco had no visitors to his room and used his telephone only for room service and for restaurant bookings. Rodriguez bugged his car and his room, and put a tape recorder on the telephone tap so that we had a record of his conversations, but we got little joy out of that. A search of Carrasco's possessions brought nothing; he carried with him just what you would expect of a man on holiday.

  Debbie wondered audibly about the muscular young black who had been imported into the house to help Luke Bailey, who did not need it, and who was making good time with Addy Williams. She knew about Walker's crew and I saw no reason to keep from her the knowledge that this addition to the household was one ofPerigord's cops.

  "I'd like you to keep to the house as much as possible," I said.

  "How long will we have to live like this?" she said desolately.

  "Being in a state of siege isn't exactly fun."

  I did not know the answer to that, but I said, "It will blow over soon, I expect." I told her about Carrasco.

  "If we can use him to nail Robinson I think it will be finished."

  "And if we can't?"

  I had no answer to that, either.

  I had not expected to go back to New Providence for some time. Jack Fletcher was an experienced manager and did not need his hand held, which is why I had put him into the Sea Gardens. But when he telephoned four days after I had left him in charge he was in a rare panic.

  "We've got big trouble, Tom," he said without preamble.

  "Our guests are keeling over in all directions dropping like flies. Tony Bosworth has his hands full."

  "What is it? Does he know?"

  "He's closed down the big air-conditioner."

  "He thinks it's Legionnaires' disease?" I thought quickly.

  "But it doesn't work that way it didn't at the Parkway. Let me talk to h
im."

  "You can't. He's in a conference with officials from the Department of Public Health."

  "I'll be right over," I said.

  "Have a car waiting for me at the airport."

  During the flight I was fuming so much that I expect steam was blowing out of my ears. After all the trouble I had taken to ensure the hotels were clean, this had to happen. Surely Tony must be wrong, the symptoms seemed quite different to me. This would be enough to give Jack Cunningham another heart attack.

  Fletcher met me at Nassau Airport himself. As we drove to the Sea Gardens I said, "How many people ill?"

  His answer appalled me.

  "A hundred and four and I'm not feeling too good myself." He coughed.

  "My God!" I glanced at him.

  "Are you really not feeling well, Jack?

  Or was that just a figure of speech? "

  "I'm feeling lousy. I'm running a temperature and I have a hell of a headache."

  He was not the only one. I said, "You're going to bed when we get back. I'll have Tony look you over. How many of that figure you gave me are stafi?"

  "As of this morning we had three on the sick list four with me now." He coughed again convulsively.

  "Stop the car," I said.

  "I'll drive." I found it puzzling that the number of staff casualties should be so low. As I drove off again I said, "How many registrations have you got?"

  "Something over three hundred; I'll let you know when we get to my office."

  "Never mind," I said.

  "I'll ask Philips. You go to bed." What he had told me meant that about one-third of the clientele had gone down sick.

  "Any deaths?"

  "Not yet," he said ominously.

  We got to the Sea Gardens and I packed Fletcher off to his staff flat and then went to look for Philips. I found him helping out at the cashier's desk where there was a long line of tourists anxious to leave as quickly as they could like money bats. The buzz of conversation in the queue was low and venomous as though coming from a disturbed hive of bees. I was in no mood to placate the rats leaving the sinking ship, to mix the metaphor even further, and I hauled him out of there.

  "Someone else can do that. Jack Fletcher's gone down sick, so you're in charge. Where's Bosworth?"

  Philips jerked his thumb towards the ceiling.

  "Doing his rounds."

  "Has he any help?"

  "A load of doctors from Nassau and some nursing staff from the hospital."

  "Track him down; I want to see him in Fletcher's office five minutes ago."

  When I saw Tony Bosworth he looked tired and drawn, his eyes were reddened as though he had not slept, and he swayed a little on his feet. I said, "Sit down before you fall down, and tell me what the hell we've got."

  He sighed as he sat down.

  "The tests aren't through yet, but I'm fairly certain it's legionellosis."

  "Damn!" I mopped the sweat from my brow and loosened my tie. It was hot and humid and I realized why. The air- conditioning in the public rooms was not working.

  "It's hitting faster this time, isn't it?"

  "It's the Pontiac fever form, I think. It hits sooner and harder, in the sense that more people exposed to it con209 tract the symptoms ninety-five per cent is the usual rate."

  "My God!" I said.

  "Then we still have a long way to go. Did you see what was happening in the lobby as you came through?"* He nodded.

  "I'm not sure it's wise to allow those people to leave.

  They could go away and still come down with the bug. "

  "I don't see how we can stop them. You can't expect people to stay in what they think is a pest house. What's the position of the Public Health Department?"

  "They're still making up their minds." Tony's eyes met mine.

  "I think they'll close you down."

  I winced.

  "How could this happen?" I demanded.

  "You know the precautions we took."

  "Tom, I don't know." He, too, took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow, then ran it around the edge of his collar.

  "What's puzzling me is the spotty spread. We're not getting an incidence of ninety-five per cent it's more like thirty per cent."

  "Thep perhaps it's not Pontiac fever."

  "All the symptoms check." Tony scratched his head.

  "But all the Italians have gone down, seventy-five per cent of the Americans, but only twenty-five per cent of the British."

  I blinked at that.

  "You mean it's attacking by nationality selectively? That's crazy!" I had a thought.

  "It's tending to give Bahamians a miss, too. Only four of the staff have gone down."

  "Four? Who's the fourth?"

  "Jack Fletcher I've just packed him off to bed. I'd like you to look at him when you have time. Who are the other three?" He named them, and I said slowly, "They all live here in the hotel." Most of the staff had homes of their own, but a select few of the senior staff, like Fletcher, had staff flats.

  It was as though I had goosed Bosworth. He jerked visibly and sat up straight from his slumped position, and I could see the Big Idea bursting from him. Someone has christened it the Eureka Syndrome. He leaned forward and grabbed the telephone. A minute later he was saying, "Nurse, I want you to go to every patient and ask a question Do you habitually take tub baths or a shower? Make a tabulated list and bring it to the manager's office. Yes, nurse, I'm serious. Get someone to help you; I want it fast."

  He put down the telephone, and I said dryly, "I'm not surprised the nurse asked if you were serious. What is this?"

  "National habits," he said.

  "Do you know the Russians don't have plugs in their wash hand basins? They don't like washing their hands in dirty water so they let the taps run."

  For a moment I thought Tony had gone completely round the bend.

  "Wh at the hell have the bloody Russians to do with this?" I said explosively.

  He held up both his hands to quieten me.

  "I once talked with an Italian doctor. He told me the Italians consider the English to be a dirty race because they bathe in their own filth. He said most Italians take showers. Now, every Italian in the hotel has gone down with this bug every last one of them."

  "And seventy-five per cent of the Americans, but only twenty-five per cent of the English."

  "Whereas, if the infection had been coming from the air- conditioner as at the Parkway, it should have been ninety-five per cent overall.

  You know what this means, Tom; it's in the water supply, not the air-conditioner. "

  "That's bad." I sat and thought about it. If the water supply was contaminated the hotel was sure to be shut down. I said, "It won't work, Tony. Everybody has been drinking the damn water, and they sure as hell don't drink their shower water."

  "But that's the point. You can drink a gallon of water loaded down with this bug and it'll do no harm in the gut. To be infective it must be inhaled into the lungs. At the Parkway the air in the lobby and on the pavement outside was filled with drift from the air-conditioner- an aerosol loaded with L. pneumophila which was inhaled. Exactly the same thing happens when you take a shower; the water is broken up into very fine droplets and you inhale some of it."

  "Jack Fletcher takes showers," I said.

  "I was in his apartment once and his wife said he was in the shower.

  I

  21 I

  could hear him; he has a fine bathroom baritone. " I blew out my cheeks.

  "So what do I tell those people out there? That everything is okay as long as they don't take a shower? I really don't think that would work."

  "I'm sorry," said Tony.

  "But I really think you'll have to close if my theory turns out to be right. I'll lay in some sodium hypochlorite to flush out the system."

  Three-quarters of an hour later we had the answer; all the patients, without exception, had taken showers. Tony had sent some of the older people to the Princess Margaret Hospital
and they were interrogated, too. Same answer.

  "That does it," he said.

  "It's in the water supply."

  I said, "We have to retrieve something out of this mess, so we'll turn it into a public relations exercise. I'll notify the Department of Public Health that we're closing before they tell me I must." I grinned at Tony and quoted,"

  "His cause is just who gets his blow in Just." Then there are the customers. We'll get them into other hotels, preferably our own, and stand the expense. " It would break Jack Cunningham's heart, but would be good business in the long run.

  "What about all the people still here and sick?"

  "They can stay if you and the other medicos can look after them. My worry is how many of them are going to die here."

  "None," said Tony.

  "No one has been known to die of Pontiac fever yet. They'll be up and about in a few days a week at most."

  "Thank God for that!" I said fervently.

  "Now for the big question. I know we can get this bacterium out of the water system. What I want to know is how it got in."

  "I'll check into that," said Tony.

  "I'll need your maintenance engineer, and I think we should have one of the Public Health people along."

  "And you'll have me," I said.

  "I want to know exactly what happened so I can make sure it never happens again."

  We began the investigation that night. All afternoon I had been helping Philips and the rest of the managerial staff to organize the future well being of our departing guests. It took a lot of telephoning around but it got done, and although my competitors were pleased enough to take the business they did not really like it.

  We all knew it would be bad for trade in the future.

  Then I had to quell a minor revolt on the part of the staff. Word had somehow got around that there was something wrong with the hotel water and I was in danger of losing some of my best people. It took some straight talking on the part of Tony Bosworth, including a demonstration in which he drank a full glass of water straight from the tap and so did 1. 1 was glad he believed his own theories but I was not so sure, and it took some effort to drink that water without gagging.

  Four of us gathered together at eight that evening myself, Tony Bosworth, Bethel, the hotel maintenance engineer, and Mackay from Public Health. Tony had a dozen sterilized sample bottles.