Bahamarama, page 13
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
“So this is how you do it, huh?” I asked Pederson.
“Do what?”
“Play good cop, bad cop. But you only got a two-man department. And Brindley isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. So you have to play the good cop and the bad cop.”
“Brindley is my nephew.”
“Sorry, no offense.”
“None taken. He don’t know shit about police work.”
“But he looks good in that uniform.”
Pederson laughed.
“That he does, that he does. He sit here polishing his helmet for you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He good at polishing. He can polish hell out of that helmet. He’s my sister’s boy. He does what I tell him. That counts for a lot.”
I ate the rest of the conch salad and waited for Pederson to finish his. When he was done he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out some toothpicks. He offered me one and I took it. We sat there picking our teeth, Pederson watching me, then saying, “I don’t have to play bad cop with you anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because now I know you didn’t kill that man.”
26
Pederson flicked his toothpick in a wastebasket by the desk.
“So you’re telling me that Bryce Gannon was definitely murdered?”
“Oh, most definitely. You want to look at the body?”
“Not particularly.”
“Don’t blame you. I didn’t like looking at it either. Gunshot tore off half his face. Shotgun, probably a 12-gauge. Got shot three times. Once here . . .” Pederson patted the back of his head. “Once in the shoulder. And once in his right leg. Fisherman pulled him out of the water first thing this morning, all the way south near Hawk Cay Cut. Body could have floated from damn near anywhere, tides running the way they are.
“I’m thinking he was already in the water when he got shot. And someone was standing in a boat shooting down at him. Because there wasn’t any gravel or sand in any of the wounds. But that’s just a guess. There’s still a lot I don’t know.”
Pederson picked up our bowls and dropped them in the trash can. He cleaned off the desktop with a paper napkin.
“One thing I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know where Ms. Pickering is.”
I sat there and took it all in. And then I said, “You checked Gannon’s room?”
“Checked it first thing,” Pederson said. “Just like you checked it last night.”
Pederson watched me. I watched him back. He said, “You want, I can tell you everything you did last night.”
“That’s up to you.”
“Then I think I’ll give you a little rundown. Just so you can verify it. And just so you’ll know what I was doing for the past three hours while you were sitting here letting Brindley entertain you. It’s how I know it wasn’t you who killed that man.”
So he went through what he knew. He knew it all. He picked it up from when I had watched Barbara through the binoculars and took it through me pulling Lord Downey from the ocean and taking him home. He knew that I sat at the Albury Beach Club bar from seven-thirty until approximately eight-thirty, at which point I walked to the Bahama Sands, arriving in the company of one Nixon Styles.
“That Nixon, he’s a piece of work, isn’t he?” said Pederson.
“Yes, he is.”
“He’s my wife’s cousin.”
“You related to everyone on the island?”
“Nah, only about half,” said Pederson. “Wilson Bonner, I’m not related to him.”
“Who’s he?”
“Security guard at the Bahama Sands, the one came upon you trying to break into Bryce Gannon’s room.”
“I wasn’t trying to break in. I was just seeing if . . . seeing if Barbara and Gannon were there.”
“Uh-huh. And when you left there it was about 9:40 P.M. You walked down Barrack Street. You stopped to take a leak in the wax myrtle bushes right before Barrack Street crosses with High Street. And then you walked on the left-hand side of the street straight from there back to the Albury.”
“How you know all that?”
“Because Wilson followed you. He was getting off work anyway. Didn’t have anything else to do. You oughta be glad he did it. Otherwise, you’d have a little gap in there where I couldn’t account for you,” he said. “Mr. Pindle said he saw you going up to your cottage. Said about ten-thirty he heard you hollering about something. Said he went up there to check, make sure everything was alright, only when he got there you were asleep on the bed. What was it you were you hollering about?”
“Just hollering.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “A man does that sometimes.”
And then I remembered something.
“There was a woman, I don’t know who she was,” I said. “But someone told me she left the Bahama Sands with Barbara and Gannon.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Woman name of . . .” Pederson flipped pages on his legal pad. “Name of Tiffani St. James. And that is Tiffani with an ‘i’ on the end. Age nineteen, but plays it much older. I talked to her already. She’s a houseguest of Burma Downey’s. According to Ms. St. James, Bryce Gannon offered to give her a ride back to the Downey house in his golf cart, and Ms. Pickering rode with them. Ms. St. James said they dropped her off a little after 8 P.M. and that was the last she saw of them.”
“You believe her?”
“No reason not to. Ms. Downey and a friend vouched for her whereabouts.”
Pederson stepped to the window and opened the blinds. The afternoon sun was blazing in across North Eleuthera Sound. He looked at the water awhile. Then he closed the blinds and turned to face me.
“I know you pulled something funny at the airport yesterday,” he said. “No record of you passing through immigration. Ought to lock you up just for lying to me about that.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“You said you had the papers. You said you left them in your room.”
“No, I said I didn’t bring them with me. Which I didn’t. Because I don’t have any.”
“Now you talking shit. I can still lock you up.”
So I told Pederson all about the fake Chip Willis and the limo. And when I got finished, he asked me, “What happened to your face?”
So I told him all about that, too.
And then he said, “Victor Ortiz, huh?”
“You know him?”
“No, just know about him. Good friend of mine’s the inspector in Freeport. Know he wasn’t ever convinced that Ortiz was one of those dead men they dragged out of that house.”
I said, “Me neither. I hauled five of them over, only four bodies were ever accounted for. Math was off somewhere.”
“Yeah,” said Pederson. “Things have a way of not adding up once Nassau police step in. And they step in everywhere there appears to be a profit. Word has it that Ortiz and his bunch were carrying some serious money on them.”
“You saying he paid his way out?”
“I’m not saying shit. I just know that whole thing was a cluster fuck once Nassau got involved, including what happened to you.”
“It’s over and done,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s why I’m gonna play it close with this one.”
“What you mean?”
“I mean, I haven’t told Nassau about this yet.”
“You haven’t reported Bryce Gannon getting shot?”
Pederson shook his head. I got up from the chair. I walked toward the window and, halfway there, I turned around and went back to the desk and stood looking down at Pederson.
“Look, Barbara is missing. And I don’t like the idea of you clicking around.”
He stood up and put both hands on the desk and squared off facing me.
“I don’t dick around,” he said.
“Then call in the F.B.I.,” I said. “Gannon’s British. Ought to call in Scotland Yard, too.”
“Yeah, ought to. But if I want to call in anyone, then that goes through Nassau. And, Nassau gets involved, they will fuck it up. You ought to know that as good as anyone.”
He was right. I had the Nassau police to thank for the fact that Victor Ortiz was still breathing air.
“You got any ideas about finding Barbara?”
“Not a one. I can’t even honestly tell you that I believe she’s still alive.”
There, he’d said it. I’d been thinking it. I sat down in the chair. Pederson sat down, too. He gave me a minute. Finally, I said: “How long you think you can play it close?”
“Not long. A couple-three days on the outside. Everyone I talked to, I told them to keep it tight.”
“Yeah, what are the chances of that?”
“Better than you might think. Brilanders are Brilanders. Might talk amongst themselves, damn sure might do that. But if I spread the word that I don’t want them letting it out, then they won’t be letting it out,” Pederson said. “I’m going to take care of this myself.”
“I’m going to find Barbara.”
Pederson smiled.
“Always good when two men know what they’re going to do.”
27
Pederson offered me a ride back to the Albury, but I told him I’d walk. I don’t know why I told him that, because I was bone tired, and there is nothing I remember about the walk except that one moment I was stepping into the late afternoon sunlight on Gaol Street, and the next moment I was in the bathroom at the cottage taking off my clothes. I got in the shower and turned on the taps full blast. After I’d lathered and rinsed, I sat down on the tile floor and let the hot water beat on the back of my neck. I closed my eyes and put my head in my hands and let the steam roll up and cover me. I tried to get lost in it.
I don’t know the last time I cried and it didn’t happen then. I tried, but I just couldn’t. I’m not sure what that says about me, except maybe it means I wasn’t feeling hopeless. I was more optimistic about things than Lynfield Pederson. Still, there was this gnawing hole, this big emptiness, this looming uncertainty, and I was glad I hadn’t looked at Bryce Gannon’s body, because I didn’t want to even begin imagining Barbara meeting that same end. It hurts—wanting to cry, not being able to. It hurts worse than crying. The long, hot shower felt good.
I was getting dressed when I heard a knock at the door. Mr. Pindle spoke from outside, saying there was a call for me in the main house. When I got there and picked up the phone in the parlor, Clarissa Percival said hello and told me she had heard about Bryce Gannon and Barbara, and she was sorry to disturb me. She said she was calling on behalf of Burma Downey.
“Ms. Downey was hoping that you could come down here,” said Clarissa, “as soon as it’s convenient.”
It took me fifteen minutes to walk down Front Street to the Downey compound. Clarissa escorted me across the grounds to one of the stilt houses. It was painted a bright pink. A couple of times, Clarissa dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. She didn’t speak, and I didn’t attempt to make small talk.
A golf cart sat on a concrete slab under the pink house, next to a massive air-conditioning unit. We walked up a wooden staircase that led to the front door. It opened before we got to it and a young woman—surfer-girl blonde, sparkly green eyes, big and healthy—motioned us inside.
She looked me up and down.
“Whoa, you’re a big one, aren’t you?”
I’ve never known what to say when people tell me this, so I just smiled and followed her as she led us down a hallway. She wore a long white cotton shift and I could see her orange bikini under it. She was barefoot and she walked with a bounce. A lot of bounces, actually. I think the bounciness meant that everything she had was real. She had a lot.
Two women were waiting for us in the living room. One of them stood and she was taller even than the blonde who showed us in. Every bit of six feet. She wore a tight wraparound skirt over what looked like a black unitard. It showed off a fine physique, the result of dedicated training. Muscles where she needed them, not a bit of flab. Maybe a few too many muscles, but then I am prejudiced about too many muscles in women, so sue me. She wore her black hair straight and long, and parted severely in the middle. A single gold hoop dangled from each of her ears. The other woman, I could only presume, was Burma Downey. She sat in a wheelchair, facing away from us, looking out a picture window toward the ocean. I could see only the back of her white hooded robe.
“I’m Zoe Applequist,” said the woman with the long black hair. She pronounced Zoe so it rhymed with “no way.” She gestured to the blonde. “This is Tiffani St. James.”
Tiffani waved a hand and plopped down on a leather couch. Pederson was right. She didn’t look nineteen. But then none of them do these days.
There was a glass-top coffee table in front of the couch, and Tiffani put her feet on it, but quickly removed them when Zoe Applequist shot her a look. Tiffani crossed her long legs at the knees, and when she did it she looked at me and rolled her eyes. As if we were coconspirators against the tyranny of those who don’t like smudge marks on their glass-top coffee tables. I think it meant she liked me. Yes, Chasteen, you’ve still got it. You’re not yet invisible to the sweet young things. Give it time. You’ll fade.
There was a whirring sound, the wheelchair spun around, and Burma Downey sat facing us. I tried not to look shocked, but I didn’t pull it off. I’ve never seen so many bandages on a person. Except for the tip of her sharp fine nose and her full lips, her entire face was enshrouded by gauze. She wore big amber sunglasses that covered her eyes. No hair showed from beneath the hooded robe. There were casts on both of her legs, below the knees, and on both of her arms, below the elbows. It hurt just to look at her.
She raised an arm and made a V with two fingers. Zoe Applequist shook a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table, lit it, and nestled it between the two fingers. Burma Downey took a long drag and exhaled slowly. I noticed a small chalkboard sitting on her lap and on it a piece of yellow chalk.
“Please sit,” Zoe Applequist told me, and I found a chair. She ignored Clarissa, who hung back on the other side of the room. “Care for a drink, Mr. Chasteen?”
“Rum, if you have it,” I said.
Zoe Applequist looked at Tiffani, and Tiffani made a cute little pout and uncrossed her legs and got up from the couch. A long counter separated the living room from a small kitchen and there were bottles sitting on it. Tiffani walked to the counter, bouncing all the way.
“Neat,” I called after her.
Tiffani turned and smiled.
“Thanks,” she said.
It was Zoe Applequist’s turn to roll her eyes.
“He means no ice with the rum, Tiffani,” she said. “Just pour it in a glass and bring it to him.”
No one said anything while Tiffani poured the rum—it was Myers’s, not my favorite, too heavy on the molasses. She walked back across the room and handed me the glass.
“Neat-o,” she said. She sat back down on the couch.
Zoe Applequist said, “As you may know, Mr. Chasteen, Burma was injured. She can’t speak.”
“I understand that.” I nodded at Burma Downey. “Sorry about your accident.”
She didn’t respond. She seemed to have forgotten about her cigarette. The ash was long and, as I watched, it fell on the chalkboard. Zoe picked up the chalkboard and swept the ashes into a wastebasket by the couch.
“Burma, honey, do you really want that cigarette?” Zoe said.
The gauze-wrapped head under the hood moved, almost imperceptibly. I took it for a yes. And if I had to guess, I’d say Burma Downey was doped to the gills. Maybe I’d be doped up, too, if I had wrong with me all that she had wrong with her.
“I will tell you what I know and Burma will help out as she can,” said Zoe. “Yesterday evening, after you left here, we discovered that Lord Downey was missing. Again.” She looked across the room at Clarissa, who kept her eyes on the floor. “We were alarmed, certainly. We began looking for him immediately, but had to stop when it got late. We went out again this morning. We combed the island, but couldn’t find him. When we got back here, it was shortly before noon, and we found this.”
Zoe Applequist reached in a pocket of her skirt and pulled out a shiny chrome cell phone. She handed it to me. I looked at it. Just a cell phone, nothing special. I gave it back to her.
“It was sitting on top of a post by the gate. We didn’t think anything of it, thought that someone, one of the groundskeepers, maybe, had left it by accident: We brought it inside with us, set it right there on the coffee table, and a little while later it began to ring. I answered it.
“There was a man on the other end. He asked to speak to Burma. I told him that Burma was unable to talk, but that I would gladly take a message. Then the man became very abusive. He said, ‘I know she can’t talk, but she can fucking listen, can’t she?’
“So I hung up the phone. But it rang again. I answered, and it was the same man, and he said, ‘The old man is going to fucking die. We’ll kill him. Let me speak to his daughter.’
“So I gave the phone to Burma. And the man said what he had to say. I tried to listen and I could hear part of it, but afterwards I had Burma write down everything. This is it, this is what he told her.”
Zoe handed me a sheet of paper. The words were written in pen with a shaky hand:
We have your father and Barbara Pickering. We want two million dollars. We will call again.
I stared at the writing on the paper until I heard Zoe say, “When they left the cell phone, they left something else, too.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a scarf. She handed it to me. It was a long purplish scarf. With tiny dolphinson it. Lucky ones.
28
I sat back in the chair. I let out some air. It was more than just a sigh. It was like something had popped loose inside and I could finally get rid of it. Barbara was alive. Alive. The scarf wasn’t much of a connection, but it was all I had. I rubbed it against my cheek. It was damp and smelled of brine, not Barbara. I smoothed it out and folded it and tucked it away in the pocket of my shorts.
Then I finished the rum.
