Under Low Skies (A Martin Billings Story Book 1) Read online

  Wilfredo chuckled. “No, Señor. For now, you are a criminal. Later, perhaps you can be an American citizen.”

  Alfredo handed Billings his pants and he slipped into them. “Well, then, since you are arresting me for murder, do you mind telling me who am I supposed to have killed? Or is that as much a secret as why you think I’m a criminal?”

  “So, you say you don’t know?” Billings shook his head. Wilfredo sighed. “We believe you killed a fisherman named Antonio Gonzalez.”

  “My brother is dead?” the girl asked.

  Wilfredo raised an eyebrow. The case was gaining in interest. “He was your brother? And you did not know he had been killed?”

  “How would I know this, you fool?”

  “I would think your family would tell you.”

  “They would if I saw them.”

  Wilfredo thought for a moment. It had been only two days since the murder, and he decided that it was possible she hadn’t known. It would never happen in his family, but families were different.

  Now the man was protesting. “I didn’t kill anyone, much less Antonio. I liked Antonio.”

  How tiresome denials were. “It is odd the way you show your affection, Señor. Hitting people in public places and threatening their lives is not usually the way friends treat each other. But I suggest you save your precious conversation for the many interviews you will face over the next few days. Otherwise you will get very tired of repeating yourself and I will get even more tired of hearing you.”

  Finally, Alfredo finished searching the last of the clothing and reluctantly handed the girl her thin dress. Wilfredo laughed. “It is amazing how long it can take to search a simple garment when you are a thorough professional, eh, Alfredo?”

  Alfredo gave a shrug and Wilfredo laughed again. After all, what was Alfredo supposed to do? Hurry and get the beautiful woman’s body covered up when he would rather look at it? Alfredo was a decent policeman, but he was still a man.

  When the girl had slipped on her dress, Wilfredo handcuffed them both. He turned to Alfredo. “When the search of the house is complete, leave the evidence with me and take them both to the jail for processing.” He sighed again. “Tell them at the jail that this one wants an attorney and his representative from the consulate.”

  Alfredo laughed. “Of course.”

  “And me?” the girl protested. “Why am I being arrested? Do you think I murdered my brother too?”

  “Arrested? No, Señorita, you are not being arrested. You are being taken into custody as a possible witness. At the very least, you will give us important information about the people involved and your gringo boyfriend in particular. We will release you after you give us a complete statement.”

  She snorted. “I hope that you will allow me to give my statement with my clothes on, at least.”

  Wilfredo shook his head. “You have very bad manners for a pretty young girl. It is no wonder that my men mistake you for a puta, a whore.” Then he quickly stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and to get away from her curses while his men finished their search.

  This case sat uncomfortably on Wilfredo’s shoulders. It was quickly developing into something quite tedious. Worse, it had political complications—the involvement of a foreigner always complicated things. Solving the crime, making the case would require painstaking effort for which he would get no credit. He shook his head. It was a shame the world was so complicated. A shame that because a gringo was involved, important people would care enough about this crime it would be important to stick to the cumbersome rules of evidence. But that was the nature of the world, and a lowly policeman had to accept it as he found it. He took a last puff and threw his cigarette butt on the ground. He watched it smolder for a moment before he gathered himself and put his mind back to work.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I sat comfortably in my usual chair at a table at the bar at Power Boats, nursing a cold beer. I like this spot because it gives me a vantage point. From my comfortable chair I can look out over the boats anchored in Trinidad’s Chaguaramas Bay. It’s also a place where people can find me when they need me.

  I was into my second Stag beer when the bartender shouted out, “Hey, Martin, there’s a fax for you up in the office.”

  I waved a hand to let him know I had heard and drank down the last of the beer.

  Power Boats is a place where people store boats, work on boats and just hang around boats. If you don’t like boats, it is a rather dull and stupid place to spend time. Despite the name, it isn’t just a place for powerboats anymore, although it used to be pretty much that way before yachting discovered Trinidad. In fact, today the largest percentage of the business at Power Boats is with cruising sailboats. They have a complete chandlery, where you can buy a wide range of boat parts and nautical toys. There’s a machine shop, a wood worker, haul-out facilities and, of course, a bar. To keep sailors around you need a bar.

  This bar is also supposed to be a restaurant, and does serve food, which must be the minimum requirement. The dining area is covered, but open to the breeze, as a sailor’s bar ought to be. The floor is actually a wooden deck that extends out over the water up to the small pier where boats load and offload passengers and supplies. So, going to the bar doesn’t involve getting too far from the water. Again, the creed of sailors would contend this is only as God would have it in a perfect world.

  Besides being close to the water, the bar is situated so it is an easy stroll from the various areas where boats are worked on. A few steps take you to the rows of hulls being painted with toxic antifouling, or to where repairs are being made that can’t be made when the boat is in the water. They pack lots of them, as many as they can, into the yard. The surface is asphalt or sand and the work, especially in the tropics, is thirsty work. So, they sell a lot of beer and rum. That makes the bar a good place to watch people, if you like that sort of thing. I do.

  Of course, not everyone who comes into the bar owns a boat or has one in the yard. Power Boats sits a few miles outside of the main city of Port-of-Spain, Trinidad’s capital. People like to escape cities, so it is a popular hangout for those who think the boating crowd might know something they don’t. Sometimes there is live music, and once in a while it is even good. There are pan bands, jazz bands, and folk singers, and even a Trini whose entire repertoire consists of old country music favorites, assuming there is such a thing.

  I guess the fact that the bartender didn’t have to ask if there was a Martin Billings in the bar shows that I’d been hanging around there quite a bit myself. As I said, the place is convenient. What can I say? I’d chosen to make it my de facto office, so I couldn’t be surprised to find the bartender not only knew my favorite drink, my favorite lunch, the girl I was seeing and the one I was dodging, but probably a lot of other things I’d really rather he didn’t know. But it is a pleasant place where I can enjoy the breeze and have a safe, if mediocre meal and still keep an eye on my own boat.

  Another nice thing about Power Boats is the free entertainment. It isn’t anything formal, nothing arranged, just the daily comings and goings of yachties of all stripes and a mixed bag of local people. The yachties usually range from retired couples, who spend six months of the year, usually the winter months, down here doing what they vaguely referring to as sailing, and the rest of the year “back home,” to young kids trying to find adventure sailing around the world without spending any money. That is possible to do, but tough. Some of them quit trying soon enough, but others go on forever. In between these extremes are those of independent means who live full time on their boats, those with skills and tools that let them earn some money, and those who try to eke out a living in the dubious field of chartering. This odd assortment of nautical folk makes for a rather interesting dynamic.

  The locals are another story altogether.

  To top off the mix, everyone, regardless of their group or background, seems a bit crazy. They range from off kilter to wide-eyed crazy. Mo
st of them are good people, preoccupied with all types of boats, and they make an interesting slice of the human pie. Talking to them, watching them, is the entertainment I mentioned. Somehow it makes the beer taste a little better and the flow of time even smoother.

  The show that goes on is continuous and surprising. For example, until the bartender disturbed me, here I sat, a tingling cold beer in my hand, watching a French boat—a thirty-foot aluminum sloop with an attractive and topless helmswoman—anchoring next to a mega yacht. A crewman on the mega yacht was screaming at the topless person, and she had begun to hurl invective back. The situation showed great promise.

  And now I had a fax. I preferred to watch the show. A fax usually means that I have more work. My partner and I run a smallish coastal freighter called Irreparable Harm. Hauling coastal freight in the Caribbean is an uncertain business in an uncertain world, especially if you are mostly operating within the law, which we tried to do. During the past year or so, the bulk of our work had involved hauling supplies from Port-of-Spain to offshore oil rigs, and sometimes from Trinidad, across the Gulf of Paria, to Venezuela.

  Business had been good, unusually so, and for the moment we were pretty flush. That had given us a chance to schedule a badly needed haul out at the commercial dry dock. But scheduling is a loose sort of thing in Caribbean boatyards, and two weeks after our haul date, we still waited for our slot. Still, we couldn’t give up our place in line and if the fax were about work, I’d have to turn it down. That not only went against the grain but also the natural order of things.

  I lingered over my beer, hoping Ugly Bill, my erstwhile partner, would appear and take over the onerous task of dealing with the fax for me. Bill’s antennae are too good for that. He can sense a rising storm or paperwork from miles away. So, when the beer bottle became empty and the topless woman went below decks, I forced myself out of my chair and up the hill to the office. The office was the top floor of a small two-story building. Downstairs was a laundry room, bathrooms, and a small general store that handled everything from canned goods to charts of the area and Trini courtesy flags.

  Up in the office, the pretty young woman who runs the front desk had the fax all ready for me. I didn’t like that at all. There is a cosmic law, probably a corollary to the one which states, “No good deed goes unpunished,” that clearly tells us the ease with which news arrives is inversely proportional to how much a person wants to get it. This particular contact was going far too smoothly to be bringing me good news, so I paid her for the fax with a bit of trepidation.

  The first thing I noticed was that the message wasn’t about business at all. I found myself staring at a short, handwritten note that said, simply: Martin, call Maggie in Venezuela. It is very important. And there was a phone number.

  Maggie was/is an ex-girlfriend. I’d last seen in St. Martin about a year and some months back. It hurt like hell when she dumped me. I understood her reasons, sort of, and was able to say it was the right thing for her to do. But I still missed her and tried not to think about her, which was almost as successful as telling myself to stand in a corner and not think about polar bears. She was sexy and smart and ran successful charters on her sailboat Scape.

  Given that Maggie was resourceful, tough and not prone to hysterics, her message meant that this was one call that had to be made right now.

  The girl at the desk sold me some phone cards and gave me a beautiful smile for free. I went downstairs to make the call. For some reason, phone companies in every country in the known universe seem to think customers want to make their calls from the noisiest spots on the face of the earth while standing in the sun. If I ever needed someone to position solar panels for maximum exposure, I’d choose someone who had experience selecting sites for pay telephones. It is uncanny. But then, they all carry cell phones. Hell, everyone carries one of the damn things these days. Everyone but me. I suppose that shows you how out of synch I am with the times. Even here most people carried cell phones. Places like this boatyard are probably the only ones on the planet that still have payphones in any form, and I must be one of their last remaining customers. They should build a museum exhibit based on me talking on the payphone and put it next to the dinosaur skeletons.

  The payphones below the office were right by the door to the laundry room. But once again things went too smoothly for comfort. The laundry was empty and quiet, and the telephone was working. My phone card worked, the lines to Venezuela were clear. Worst of all, Maggie answered on the third ring. The portents were all lining up to be pretty ominous and unusual. I half expected the sun to duck behind a cloud.

  Her voice came across the line flowing like honey. “Martin, thanks for getting back to me so quick.” Then, never one for small talk, she said, “Listen, I’m afraid I have bad news. It’s about Tim. I’m afraid he is in terrible trouble.”

  Right then I knew things would get complicated. Maggie had a soft spot for my little brother, Tim. Back a lifetime ago, when she and I were living together, he’d come down for a visit and she'd taken to him like a big sister. I’ve come to believe that it's a mistake to introduce relatives to people you intend to know for a while.

  The other operative rule that popped into my head: Never disregard omens.

  “Maggie,” I said calmly, “Tim being in trouble is a report of ancient and ongoing history, not news. He has been getting in and out of trouble ever since high school. He is in perpetual need of someone to bail him out.”

  “Funny you should use that word, bail,” she said, not sounding amused at all. “But bail won’t make it this time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is here in Venezuela. He’s in jail in Cumaná, charged with murder.”

  The word “murder” sent a chill through me. For years my little brother, now in his middle twenties, had been on the losing side of the struggle to find happiness. But he had never been in major trouble. He had been dead broke and in debt, did some jail time for vagrancy, and he’d been in bar fights, and even had his life threatened when he messed around with some rich guy’s wife a little too openly. I guess you’d say he got himself into a series of scrapes, rather than in trouble. I had always considered the possibility of someone murdering him—me for instance—but he wasn’t the type to kill anyone. At his worst, he was just an overage, teenage-acting pain in the ass. Maggie knew this as well as I did.

  But Tim had never pretended to be anything he wasn’t, and Maggie liked the kid.

  I let out a long breath and tried to think. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “I’m no lawyer. I’ll hire him one. I’ve got some money.”

  She let me ramble and I watched the digital display of my credit with the phone company plunge toward nothingness. “Come to Venezuela, Martin,” she said. “Now. He needs his brother at least as much as he needs a lawyer. Probably a lot more.”

  “What about the American Consulate? What are they doing?”

  “Sitting in Caracas, asking the authorities to keep them advised of the situation. In short, what you expect—nothing.

  “Your tax dollars at work,” I muttered darkly. “Okay, Maggie, let me see if I can get a flight.”

  “I booked you on a flight that leaves tomorrow morning for Margarita. You can connect with a commuter hop to Cumaná from there. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  “Still pretty sure of yourself, eh, Maggie?”

  She waited a couple of heartbeats before answering. It made me realize that my snide comment had stung her, and I felt bad. But I couldn’t take it back.

  “I’m just trying to help Tim,” she said finally.

  “Okay,” I said. “Give me the details of the flight.” I dug a business card out of my wallet to write on and took the pen from my shirt pocket. I looked at the business card. Ahmal’s Welding—Carnage it said. Carnage was a village just up the road. Ahmal was a self-taught welder, and he had been both a bad teacher and a bad student, I had learned much to my regret. The
card was more useful as notepaper.

  She gave me the flight numbers and times, then said softly, “It seems wrong to be saying this under the circumstances, but I’m looking forward to seeing you again.”

  I could feel the blood pounding in my temples. A thousand questions popped into my head, mostly variations on, if you feel that way, why did you leave? But I kept them to myself for a change, and simply said, “I’m glad you feel that way, ’cause I do too. I think we might have a lot to talk about besides Tim.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, and hung up.

  I walked back to the bar slowly, feeling drained. I had a lot to do. I had to go, with Bill, to Immigration and have myself taken off the crew list for Harm, and I had to get my plane ticket to show to Immigration before I did that. But first I had to talk to Ugly Bill.

  My mind bounced from thought to thought, from pillar to post, like some errant ping-pong ball in a typhoon. I worried about Tim, speculated on why he had been back in Venezuela and how he could have wound up getting himself charged with murder, and flashed back to thoughts of my romance and breakup with Maggie.

  Actually, I hadn’t broken up with Maggie. One day she simply called a halt to our relationship and sailed off on a charter as calm as could be. She wouldn’t say why or give me a chance to ask questions.

  I’d met other girls since then. Trinidad was full of beautiful women, an exotic blend of African and East Indian blood that seemed to result in the best and sexiest features of both races. But none of the women came to mean as much to me as Maggie. Maybe it was just a matter of chemistry. It takes two to tangle, as the folk saying goes, the way we tell it anyway, and I suspect that most of the women expected a man my age, forty, to have begun a serious contemplation of the joys of domestic existence. None I had met shown any real enthusiasm for an itinerant life aboard a tramp freighter. At any rate, they weren’t exactly overwhelmed by the idea of life shared with Ugly Bill on board Harm.