Adrift on St. John (30 page)

The programmer sighed tiredly and glanced at his watch. “Any chance you could let me in this afternoon?” he asked, clearing his throat to emphasize the request. “I’d like to get a head start if I could.”

Vivian huffed impatiently. “We’ll have to hurry,” she replied testily. She shifted the clipboard to her hip so that she could reach into her pocket for a large key ring. “My son will be getting in from school in about fifteen minutes.”

She motioned to a staff member sitting behind the wheel of a motorized golf cart. With a nodding jerk of her head, Vivian dismissed the driver and slid into his seat. She grabbed a towel from the center console compartment and wiped off the raindrops that had splattered across the dashboard.

The programmer hefted his roll-around suitcase into the rear cargo space and squeezed himself into the passenger seat.

Vivian muttered something under her breath as the cart groaned beneath his weight, then she pushed the accelerator to the floor.

After a jerking start, the golf cart chugged off down the red brick path leading into the resort.

A few minutes later, the computer programmer stood in the administrative building’s dimly lit basement. Fingering the
bent and rusted key Vivian had entrusted to him, he turned to glance anxiously back at the dusty concrete steps leading up to the ground floor.

Outside, the rain had provided a cooling respite to the island’s heat, but here in the basement’s claustrophobic confines, conditions were stuffy and hot.

Best to get in and out of this place as quickly as possible, he thought as he wiped a layer of sweat from his flushed face. He had one more task to complete—delivering the contents of the canvas toolbox—then he would lay low until it was time to hop on the late-night water taxi back to St. Thomas. The resort was long overdue for Wi-Fi Internet access, but he wouldn’t be the one installing it.

The programmer jiggled the ill-fitting key in the lock until the teeth finally found the right groove. Once the interior bolt slid free of the latch, the heavy metal door swung open with a loud
creak
.

Spying a triangular chunk of wood in the corner of the stairwell, he pushed the door against the concrete wall and crammed the nose of the piece of wood into the half-inch space beneath its bottom width.

Dusting his hands off on the back of his pants, the programmer slipped the key into his right pocket and picked up his bags. He stepped into the storm cellar and parked his roll-around near the door. Turning, he flipped a plastic switch on the wall nearest the entrance, but the low-hanging fluorescent bulb dangling in the center of the concrete-walled room failed to illuminate. Unhooking a penlight from his shirt collar, he panned the narrow beam across the cellar’s interior space.

A rudimentary toilet and makeshift shower were sequestered in the back corner. A rotting plastic chair had been upended on the sand-coated floor. Moldy, decaying cardboard boxes lined one of the walls. The boxes were presumably filled with a stash of provisions, should anyone be unlucky enough to find himself stranded inside.

The programmer shuddered. The cellar’s isolation was the reason he’d selected it as the drop-off point, but he’d rather drown in a hurricane than be trapped indefinitely within this room.

The programmer righted the chair and set his toolbox on its seat. As he unzipped the top opening, a scuttling sound scratched against the concrete floor in the corridor outside the cellar entrance.

Had he been followed? The programmer closed his eyes for a long panic-surging moment. Summoning his inner reserves, he calmly reopened them to the sight of a crusty hermit crab carrying its shell across the threshold.

“Hello, my friend,” he said with a laugh. He walked over to the small crustacean and bent down to get a better look. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

The crab eyeballed the wide heft of the man hovering above him, scurried to the nearest corner, and retracted into its shell.

With a sigh of relief, the programmer crossed to the far side of the room, where a large metal cupboard containing the electrical boards had been mounted onto the wall. He could hear the crab slowly creeping along behind him, the hard surface of its claws clacking against the gritty concrete floor.

“Glad for the company, little buddy,” the programmer said as he thumbed through his pockets for a second key.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

Friendly little guy, he thought, dismissing the sound. He inserted the second key into the cupboard’s lock and wrenched open the metal casing. Waving the penlight up and down the electrical box, he searched for his package.

“Ah, there you are,” he said with chuckle, reaching for a paper bag crammed into a crevice in the back wall.

He tipped the bag sideways, sliding out a wad of bills. His thick fingers quickly thumbed through the stack, sizing it up for a quick estimation. Four years’ worth of embezzlement
through the resort’s water taxi and overtime expenditure account had racked up a nice pile of cash, his payment for relocating Vivian and her son here from the Bahamas.

Tack. Tack. Tack.

“Hey, pal,” the programmer said nervously, turning his light toward the floor to look for the crab, “don’t think I’m going to cut you in on this…”

The words died in his throat. The crab was still curled up in the corner near the door, in the same tucked-up formation it had assumed a few minutes earlier. The seat of the plastic chair where he’d set his canvas toolbox was now empty.

The color drained from the programmer’s face as the heavy metal door began to swing shut.

“Who goes there?” he called out tentatively.

The door thumped against the threshold, and the lock clicked in its fittings. With clammy, fumbling fingers, the programmer reached into his pocket, desperately searching for the main key.

“Hey!” he yelled angrily as he discovered the empty pocket. “Hey!”

No one answered. The programmer and the hermit crab were locked together in the darkness of the storm cellar.

38

The public power grid for St. John relied on a network of submarine cables that connected it to the Red Hook power station on the east end of St. Thomas. The lines lay at the bottom of the Pillsbury Sound, where the brilliant crystal blue water of the shoreline darkened to a deep murky gray.

Lobsters skulked along the sand’s swirling surface, probing the cylindrical tube with their claws as they searched for prey hiding in the loose crevices beneath. Stingrays skated through the deep water, their dark menacing cloaks silently stalking the power line’s endless snake. Occasionally, the white-tipped jaws of a shark playfully mouthed the cable, leaving behind a telltale imprint of pointed indentations.

Every so often, a storm rolled across the Virgins that generated enough surface turbulence to disrupt the creepy quiet of this underwater scene, roiling the aging cables until a weak spot was exposed.

The lights of St. John flickered so regularly that no one questioned the cause of this latest power outage. The larger resorts, several of the bars and restaurants, as well as most permanent residents relied on backup generators to mitigate the constant power inconvenience.

Few people knew that these most recent blackouts were no act of nature.

Beulah Shah, who slipped the cellar key into a pocket of her frayed shirtdress as she limped up the stairs to the administrative building’s first floor, was one of those few.

It would be at least twenty-four hours, if not more, she thought as the canvas toolbox swung from her bony hand, before anyone came to check on the resort’s main electrical box in the cellar where the computer programmer was now trapped.

39

Early Wednesday morning, November 23, I sat on a bench under the eaves outside the resort’s reception area, waiting in the darkness for my ride. Although the rain was still smattering down, a coming break in the storm pattern promised a brilliant, clear sunrise—but that wasn’t the reason I had risen so early.

The battered, doorless Jeep that rattled up the entrance leg of the horseshoe-shaped drive was unlikely to be confused with any of its rental counterparts. I yawned sleepily as the vehicle slowed to an idle in front of the reception’s entrance. After a brisk skip through the raindrops, I opened the passenger-side door and climbed inside.

The freshly showered man behind the wheel was almost unrecognizable. Charlie Baker’s hair was damp, neatly combed back, and uncovered by its habitual dirty baseball cap.

I couldn’t imagine where he’d found the white cotton shirt and pressed khaki shorts he was wearing. They couldn’t possibly have come from his regular closet.

“Look at you,” I greeted him sleepily as my gaze swept from his clean scalp to the sharp tan line on his lower shins.
His pale feet sported a new pair of leather sandals. “All cleaned up and ready for your big trip.”

Charlie glanced sheepishly down at his wardrobe and shrugged his shoulders.

After many months of wrangling, his ex-wife had agreed to bring their kids, now teenagers, down to the islands for Thanksgiving. The group of them would spend the rest of the week together in one of Charlie’s rental villas on St. Croix.

Located only thirty miles to the south, St. Croix was a world away from St. John.

Despite the short distance, it would take Charlie the better part of the day to get there. After the ferry ride to Red Hook, he’d catch a taxi across St. Thomas to Charlotte Amalie. There, he would board a seaplane to Christiansted, St. Croix’s main port.

The largest of the Virgin Islands, St. Croix fell within the confines of the U.S. Territory more by happenstance than geography.

Seeking additional arable land for sugarcane production, the Danish purchased the island from the French in 1733. It was because of this land deal that the French sent soldiers to help the Danes put down the slave revolt on St. John later that same year. Many of the farmers displaced by the St. John attacks eventually settled on St. Croix, whose flat southwestern quadrant far surpassed St. Thomas in its agricultural potential.

The resulting development led to a much more diversified economy than that of the northern Virgin Islands. Over the years, agriculture had been replaced by an immense oil refinery business and several rum-distilling operations. Even in modern times, tourism was but a minor component of the island’s overall revenue.