In Harm's Way (A Martin Billings Story Book 3) Read online

  In the old days, before Hugo Chavez did his thing in Venezuela, you head there for cheap fuel, cheap Polar beer, and good rum. Back then, we made those runs a couple times a year. With that once wonderful country under new management since around 2000, it was no longer such a good option. Even if we made the trip, it was unlikely we’d find a marina with enough fuel to spare, anyway.

  The storm broke, leaving the air fresh and cool. I closed the ledgers. I’d juggled the numbers until even I didn’t believe them anymore and was glad when Bill wandered in to make a rather predictable suggestion.

  “Time for a drink ashore,” he said. “The air is clear, the water calm, and my belly hollow.”

  “And The Barracuda beckons,” I said.

  “Where we are owed a free drink by the lovely lady who owns the damn bar and is giving you the glad eye,” he said, winking. “A winning combo if I ever saw one. Not much in the world better than that.”

  “Let me stow the paperwork in the desk and I’ll be with you.”

  “Lilly and I won’t wait forever,” he said, ducking out.

  As we were in the commercial harbor and the public dock over in the yacht basin, we had a couple of choices. The easiest was to take the dinghy to the dock right by the customs shed and tie up. But then we’d have to catch a taxi over to the yacht basin. Instead, as Lilly was a lovely girl who didn’t mind a bit of open water, we motored around the point to the yacht basin and tied up at the dock all the boaters use. It’s centrally located, and leads tight to Front Street, the main street that runs parallel to the waterfront.

  The Barracuda bar perched comfortably a couple of blocks further down, overlooking the water as a waterfront bar should.

  “Look at all the pretties,” Bill said, pointing to bunting that was slung from rooftops crossing the street. “Someone is planning a party and I think we are invited.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought. Of course, getting people interested in partying doesn’t take a whole lot of convincing on these islands.”

  “No, sir. These are intelligent and cultured people.”

  Like most Caribbean bar/restaurants, The Barracuda was a thatched-roof open air place with wooden floors. Laid-back is the term most people use to describe the atmosphere. I call it my kind of place — a relaxing establishment dedicated to booze and food and conversation, with the only ferns in sight being those that grew up through cracks in the floor.

  We’d arrived early and found it fairly empty. That suited us, as we had the wild and crazy idea of having a relaxing and nice dinner before the evening rush got going strong. And there was always an evening rush. This was the gathering place for boaters of all stripes—yachties, fishermen, and grubby freighter crews, like us.

  We grabbed our favorite table, one that had a view of the yacht basin. Even though Bill and I aren’t generally fans of most yachts, there are some lovely craft in the area, just as there are some fine deep-water sailors that get jumbled in among the day sailors.

  I saw that one boat, in particular, had caught Bill’s attention. Anchored out at the edge of the basin, not far from where we’d anchored WANDERER earlier, sat a junk-rigged boat. The junk rig is a working rig — practical, if not exactly in fashion. I had to admire the look of her.

  “A man could sail around the world on a boat like that in style,” Bill said.

  “She’s not going to go well to windward,” I pointed out.

  “If I decided to go sailing, it would be to sail around the world. I couldn’t imagine wanting to rush a trip like that,” he said. “A boat like that promises fairly genteel, if leisurely, passages. There’s no fancy rigging to deal with. Trimming the sails is basic, freeing a soul to kick back and read a book, drink some rum, and watch the ocean go by. And all that is just as nice at three knots as at ten.”

  He had a point, and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard him talk wistfully about doing something like that. I wondered if he thought about it seriously, or just enjoyed the fantasy. “The trip would be better with company.”

  “With the right company,” he said. “With the wrong person, it would be hell. I do keep a weather eye out for a woman who loves the sea. Going around the world as the wind takes you, sharing it with a lovely lady who can handle the helm in a gale — that’s my idea of an ideal retirement plan.”

  His reverie, the faraway look in his eyes snapped when Gazele came up, greeting us with a smile. I stood, and she gave me a warm hug. “I knew you’d come,” she said. She had two glasses and a bottle of rum in her hand. Setting the glasses in front of us, she poured healthy drinks then sat the bottle down and rested a delicate hand on my shoulder, a soft touch. She bent down and whispered in my ear. “I’m glad you came to see me, Marty.”

  “And where else would we go?”

  She clucked. “I was wondering about the foreign woman you picked up.”

  I grinned at her. “She’s trouble. I’m trying to forget her. Not that I have a clue where she went.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is a small island. If a man decided he wanted to find someone it wouldn’t be so hard.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “I’m not even saying. You know she parked a perfectly good yacht on a reef, right? A woman like that seems like she’d be too much trouble for me.” I touched her hand. “The wrong kind of trouble.”

  “You saying you might like my kind of trouble?”

  I laughed, “Against my better judgment,” I said, taking her hand, “I’m saying it might be fun to find out what sort of trouble you are.”

  She laughed to let me know she heard, and then straightened, turning to look at people who were filing in, starting to fill up the tables. The look in her eyes changed and I suspected it was due to the smell of money that began to fill in the air, arousing her in a different way entirely.

  “I gotta get to work,” she said. “These customers got no respect for a woman’s pleasure,” she said.

  “You are complaining about having too much business?” Bill asked.

  “It not the amount, fool. Just that considerate folk would come in here nice and steady, throughout the night, and every night of the week, not all arrive in one damn bunch, like some damn school of sardines swarming around the reef then shooting off, all sudden like.”

  Her good-natured complaining, the image she conjured of sardines, made me smile. Everyone knew that the woman loved staying busy, being successful, and having her bar bustling with activity, all those things made her feel nothing but happy.

  As she scooted off, Sally Walker, Gazele’s main waitress, came up to us. I noted that, as always, she directed her high-intensity smile at Bill. “So what you boys having with your rum?” she asked.

  Bill refilled his glass. “More rum. It goes great with everything.”

  “Gazele said you boys should be hungry…” she smiled and let her hip brush Bill’s shoulder. “For some food.”

  I pointed to a gecko, sitting on the rattan railing that divided the place up. “Say, is there a special on these fellas?”

  Sally turned the page on her order book, poised her pencil over it, ready to write. “If you want to order gecko, Darling, then I’m betting we can fix you up. Roasted or deep fried? Seeing as they’s about one million of them running around. Now you understand, we don’t put them on the menu, seeing they eat lotsa bugs and all, but I can catch a dozen or so… why not?”

  Bill laughed. “I’ll stick with fish. Red snapper, please.”

  Sally pointed over her shoulder toward the old swimming pool that had once been the pride and joy of a guest house next door—until a hurricane removed the entire place. In the aftermath, the owner wanted to move to the US and sold it to Gazele. She leveled the mess of the house, but kept the pool, filling it with salt water and a variety of fish. “You want fish, big man? I can get you a fine deal on Larry,” she said.

  “Larry’s probably a bit tough by now,” Bill lau
ghed. Larry was a six-foot barracuda. Jackson had given it to Gazele as a joke, but she’d named him Larry and put him in the pool — now he owned it and the other fish that swam in it were his meals.

  Sally cocked her head. “We got eating sized ones too, but they cost more.” She pointed to the large tank behind the bar that held more of the namesake barracuda. These were practical ornaments but could also play an important role on the menu. Eating barracuda was an iffy proposition. They could be a source of ciguatera, dangerous toxins that accumulate in reef-eating fish, such as parrot fish, that then got concentrated in the predators that ate them, a food chain topped by barracuda. But the island mantra said: “long as your arm, do no harm.” People ate the young ones and prepared right, the fish’s tasty, firm flesh made for good eating.

  “I think I’ll stick with your famous red snapper and fries,” Bill told her, nodding toward the tank. “Those boys look real happy right where they are.”

  I looked at them, swimming about, looking lazy. “I’ll have the same.”

  “Coming up.”

  “Say, Sally, on the way in we noticed that someone is dressing up Front Street. What’s that all about? Is there gonna be a big party?”

  She scribbled on her order pad. “Damn right. Seems some minister bringing an important man over from St. Agnes to we little island. Seems the minister has a need to stand in front of folks and tell us how making themselves rich is good for us.”

  “Elections must be coming up,” Bill said.

  “When is this party? Soon?”

  She shrugged. “Not sure, and it don’t pay to ask around here. All I know is it’s gonna be nice and loud and, when I hear the music playing, I gonna know it’s time to dance.” She bumped her hip against Bill. “We gonna dance, big man?”

  “With you? Hell yes,” Bill said, winking. “I’ll dance you right off the floor.”

  “You best be a man of your word, big man, cause Sally is counting on dancing all that night. And if you can’t keep up…”

  “I’ll keep up, little lady.”

  “Whatever night it is,” I said.

  “It be whenever the music starts happening.” She grinned. “If I wait for the music, then I don’t get there early and have to hear them politicians telling they lies. I can go straight to the partying.”

  “Smart woman,” I said.

  “You bet your ass.” With that, she tucked her pencil behind her ear and swished her way back to the kitchen to put in our order.

  The look on Bill’s face as he watched her walk away amused me. “Is there something going on between you two?” I asked.

  Bill tipped his head. “If I have anything to say about it, there will be.” Then he grinned, and licked his lips, sliding his chair back and looked out at the junk-rigged yacht again. He lifted his glass with a faraway look in his eyes, then sighed. “I wonder if Sally would like to learn to sail.”

  It didn’t seem that unlikely.

  6

  With Gazele rushing about, greeting people, seating them, instructing her staff, we turned our attention to the important matter of dinner. Gazele’s cook, Gracie, makes great meals… as long as you remember what sailing guru Chris Doyle wrote in his cruising guides to the Caribbean — anyone who orders beef in the islands, deserves what he gets. It’s not exactly cattle country.

  But when it comes to fish — yeah, mon, this is the place.

  Wise in the ways of island food and knowing Gracie’s special skills, Bill and I both managed to enjoy delicious red snapper, served with plantains, and rice, and naturally, washing it down with the bottle of Barbados’ finest rum, Gazele’s present.

  I should point out that, like old salts everywhere, Bill and I drink our rum with… rum. We watch, astonished, as the yachties, especially French yachties, jazz up their drinks with lime juice and sugar. Even some of the locals like it that way, and it probably is handy for getting a person drunk faster, what with the extra sugar and all, but that concoction, not to mention all that effort, seemed like a waste of good rum to me.

  I like the taste of rum.

  At a table in the corner, four older men, probably off yachts, were contaminating their rum and playing poker — by my standards, partaking of a double evil.

  Bill saw me looking at them and laughed. “You don’t get the attraction of games of chance,” he said.

  “The operative word is game,” I said. “My life always has enough gambles built into it without risking money on the turn of a card.”

  “The truth of the matter,” Bill said, “is that you don’t like card games because you suck at them. You can’t lie for shit. The way you would play, it wouldn’t even be gambling — you would just be donating your money.”

  As a reasonable adult, one who enjoys the give and take of intelligent debate, I stuck my tongue out at him. His observation contained more than a single grain of painful truth.

  After Sally cleared away the dinner dishes, taking time to give Bill a grand and lingering, promising smile that went far beyond the desire of a waitress for a good tip, we sat back with the last of our bottle to enjoy the ambiance and the taste of the rum. Our table looked out over the water and as the sun set, the tropical night growing dark quickly, we saw the riding lights of the boats anchored in the yacht basin begin to twinkle, while around the edges of the basin, lights came on in houses and businesses, reflected out over the water.

  Jackson came walking in with his two crewmen. His guys headed for a table, but he split off, wandering out way and slapping us each on the shoulder. “How it going?”

  “We’re fine. You seem kinda late getting in,” Bill said.

  “We had us a wild time with them Venezuelan coast guard types, boy,” he said.

  “What was their problem?” I asked.

  “Them not want us catching no damn fish, seems like.”

  “Why not? Why do they care?”

  He grinned. “You know them big Japanese tuna fishing boats, the ones what got helicopters and all sorts of fancy gear on them?”

  “Sure.”

  “Seems they don’t like us taking away the food for the tuna, so they paying the coast guard to chase us off.”

  “And you just apologize and sail off?” I asked. “I can’t picture that, somehow.”

  He laughed, a big, hearty, rolling laugh. “Sure, that exactly right. Then we go around an island or two, put out the nets and drag them as we head home, doing what they say but taking the long way. Long enough to fill them nets.” He laughed. “Hell, boy, we caught ourselves a mess of sea bass.”

  “A profitable day, then?”

  “Damn right.” Then he was off to join his men in food and drink.

  “Jackson is an adaptable sort,” I said.

  “He’s a fisherman,” Bill said. “You gotta be to survive in that business, dealing with governments, bad catches, and rotten weather…”

  Business kept picking up, surrounding us with the rising clamor of a busy bar, the chattering of people, the clanking of plates and glasses, and the pulsing of a new soca tune on the stereo. Sally took our plates, lingering as she took Bill’s, and we settled down with the remnants of the bottle for an evening of not much.

  After a time, Walter came in, making a beeline for us. In his wake I saw a man I didn’t know, but my instinct said was some sort of official person or another. It was another example of my finely hones instincts at work, although I suppose his uniform might have given me a clue.

  “Martin, Bill, I’d like you to meet our new head of the police here on St. Anne,” Walter said, slipping into a seat at our table. He held out a hand toward the other man. “This be Inspector Thomas George. The poor man was recently assigned to we island to restore law and order.”

  I waved to an empty seat. “Welcome. Have a seat, Inspector,” I told the tall, thin man. I guessed he was about forty. He had a long face punctuated with sharp, inquisitive eyes that danced around the room, taking in everything,
not just us, with an intensity that impressed me. I’d be willing to bet that, if you met him later, he’d be able to describe everything he saw in detail.

  “I’m afraid this is not a social call,” he said. “I’m here on a police matter.”

  Bill laughed. “This is St. Anne, Inspector. Everything in the islands is social, including police matters, maybe especially police business. If it ain’t social, it ain’t happening.”

  “Just so,” Walter said, struggling to keep a straight face. He leaned forward to speak conspiratorially. “You see, our Inspector George just coming back to the islands after spending three years in England where he has been enjoying the fog, and tea, and neckties, and working at Scotland Yard,” Walter said. “You needing to give he some time to readjust to our ways. Right now, he wanting to talk to you and thinking today somehow better than tomorrow, so I telling he that this would be the place to find you.”

  “And now that you have found us, you’d better have a seat,” I said. “I’m getting a kink in my neck looking up at people. That makes me cranky and uncooperative.”

  With a very English harrumph and some starched-collar resistance, the inspector finally took the offered seat, sitting stiffly. The ever-vigilant Sally brought two glasses and Bill poured the men drinks.

  “I’m afraid that I’m on duty,” the inspector said.

  “No matter,” I said.

  Bill pushed the glass toward him. “The point behind my colleague’s vague statement is that if you don’t drink on duty around here, you ain’t gonna earn people’s trust. If you want answers to your questions, you best drink up.”

  The Inspector’s scowl deepened. “That’s not the way—”

  Seeing his hesitation, Walter winked at me and raised his glass. “Now we need to be drinking to the Queen,” he said.

  I chuckled at the way Walter’s toast put the man on the spot. Bill and I raised our glasses: “To the Queen.”

  With an anxious look around, Inspector George picked up his glass and gave Her Majesty a modest sip before putting the glass down. Walter’s clever ploy, playing off loyalty to the queen against the regulations, impressed me.