Benchley, Peter (10 page)

When they were finished, he said, “You were right not to ring the police.”

“Why?” said Gail.

“They couldn’t have done anything. He’s a shadow, that man. He has friends in many strange places. I know what he can get away with.” He shook his head.

“Damn. It is a robust piece of bad luck that we’re faced with him so soon. You’ve never heard of him?”

“No,” Sanders said. “Should we have?”

“I suppose not. He’s got a dozen different names. He comes from Haiti, originally. That’s the myth, at least. It’s hard to separate fact from fancy about Cloche; he’s built himself into a kind of folk hero among island blacks. A lot of them think he’s the reincarnation of Che Guevara. And not just here. All over. In the Windwards and Leewards, his mother is still powerful bush.”

“Bush?” Gail said.

“Magic, voodoo. You’ll see little statues of her in the huts on the hillsides of Guadalupe and Martinique. They

adore her, like … well, I imagine Eva Peron is a parallel. She was a chambermaid in a hotel in Haiti. At the age of forty-three, she came down with glaucoma, and when it got so bad she couldn’t see to work, the hotel fired her without a sou. Cloche himself was nothing but a busboy then, but he was clever. He took mamma into the woods and set her up as a symbol of white oppression. He spread stories about her, made her into an all-knowing black princess, said she cured the incurable and raised the dead-all the standard stuff. People wanted to believe in her-Christ, ‘wanted” isn’t the word:

longed

to. Once mamma was established, Cloche began to pass himself off as her messenger. He’s been all over the islands, thrown out of most of them two or three times, spreading the message. Nobody knows if mamma’s still drawing breath, but Cloche is still spreading the word.”

“What’s the word?” asked Sanders.

“It’s time for the blacks to get the biscuit. I suppose it was only a matter of time until he came back here.”

“It doesn’t look to me like Bermuda’s ripe for revolt,” Sanders said.

“It’s hard to tell.”

Gail said, “The blacks aren’t exactly what you’d call equal here.”

“No, but there’s been no serious trouble since the sixty-eight riots-aside from the Sharpies assassination, and there’s still no proof about that one.”

“Cloche as much as admitted that his people killed Sharpies,” said Sanders.

“Of course. Why shouldn’t he? No one else has been

arrested, and it makes him seem like a bigger threat.

It’s like those Arab fringe groups. Every time a plane crashes, some bunch of birds jumps up to take credit, claiming the crash was a revolutionary act.

Crap. Of course Cloche

may

have killed Sharpies; I wouldn’t put it past him.

But the fact that he says he did doesn’t make it true.” Treece looked at Gail. “In any event, Bermuda has been fairly peaceful for some time. It’s a dicey peace, though. Blacks are the majority here, and they get less of the pie than the whites. For my money, they get more as they merit more, and they’re getting more all the time. But a chap like Cloche can rile them, convince them that they’re oppressed, that numbers alone are enough to merit more.

Manipulate them for his own purposes. He’s a persuasive speaker, and they’re scared of him. Besides, there’s no trick to convincing people that they deserve more than they’ve

got.

“Is he a communist?” Gail asked.

“Hell, no. He spouts a good Marxist line-“from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” and all that. I think what he really wants is to set up some sort of island kingdom.

He won’t call it that, of course. It’ll be the People’s Republic of some goddamn thing.”

“And the drugs?”

“Money. Power. I imagine he’ll try to sell the drugs in the States.” Treece paused. “I don’t want him to get them.” He looked at Sanders. “A million dollars? He

is

anxious. were you tempted?”

Sanders looked at Gail. “No,” he said.

“Though God knows we could use the money.”

“It’s a decent amount of cash, no doubting it,”

Treece said, slapping the photostats in front of him. “But if I can find some parts to this puzzle and we really get lucky, there might be a like amount of real

goodies down there.”

“Do you think there may really be a treasure?”

Gail said.

“No. But I’m not convinced there isn’t. You never know till you’ve had a good look.”

“What do we do about Cloche?” Sanders said. “Is there a way to get around him? I don’t like the thought that he might follow us to New York.”

“For the moment, there’s nothing to do. You’re stuck either way, until we know what’s really down there.

We’ll have a look around tonight. If we don’t find any more ampules-and it’s possible these two are a fluke-you can deliver the two you found to Cloche and wish him well. If there’s nothing else there, I don’t think he’ll bother with you any more. With luck, that’s what’ll happen. But before we go down again, I want to talk to Adam Coffin.”

“Who’s he?”

“The

Goliath

survivor. I imagine he’s still chary about talking about the drugs, but perhaps the sight of a couple of ampules will jar his memory.” Treece put the two ampules in his pocket. “Leave your bikes here. You’ll be coming back later to dive. We can all fit in Kevin’s car.”

“About the diving,” Gail said. “My nose has been bleeding since yesterday.”

“Bad?”

“No.”

“Not to worry. When you haven’t been wet in a while, a day or two of ups and downs will irritate the tissues in your sinuses. Stay out of the water for a bit, and it’ll clear up.”

“What about tonight?”

“I wouldn’t. There’s no sense pushing it. The two of us can manage.” Treece opened the kitchen door for them. “You go ahead on your bikes, then. I’ll come by the hotel, and you can follow me down to Coffin’s.”

The house was tiny-a limestone cottage perched on a neatly tended patch of weeds overlooking Hamilton Harbour. There was no driveway, only a dirt shoulder wide enough to permit one car to pull off the road and stop without risking a rear-end collision with the passing traffic. Treece nosed the Hillman into the brush beside the shoulder, leaving room behind for the two motorbikes. His immense frame looked ridiculous in the car: he was hunched forward so his head wouldn’t jam into the roof, and his legs were so long and so cramped that he could not put them out of the car first. The only way he could get out was to open the door and fall to the right, supporting himself with his hands on the ground, dragging his legs after him.

“Damn fool things,” he said as he wiped his hands on his pants. “Built for bloody midgets.”

“If you ever had an accident in that car,” Sanders said, “they’d have to cut you out with a torch. Why don’t you ride a motorcycle?”

“Suicide machines. Only good thing about them is they

keep the black population down.” Treece looked at Gail and smiled. “Forgive me. I’m a relentless bastard.”

They walked up the dirt path to the house. A small man was on his hands and knees, digging in a flower bed beside the front door.

“Adam,” Treece said.

Coffin’s head snapped around. “Treece!” he said, surprised. With a nimble motion he pushed himself backward and rolled to his feet.

He wore nothing but a tattered pair of denim shorts. His body was tan, lean, and sinewy, without a trace of fat. Strands of aged muscle coursed along his arms and chest as visibly as a drawing in an anatomy text. His eyes were fixed in a permanent squint that had cut deep grooves in the dry brown skin on his cheeks and forehead. A shaggy mane of white hair hung down the back of his neck. He smiled at Treece, displaying abused gums spotted here and there with chipped and yellowed teeth. “It’s good to see you; been awhile.”

“Aye, it has.” Treece enveloped Coffin’s bony fingers in his enormous fist and pumped once briskly up and down. “We stopped by to chat you up.” He introduced the Sanderses to Coffin.

“Come in, then,” said Coffin, leading them into the dark house.

The one-room house was divided by furniture into three sections. On the right there was a hammock, suspended catty-corner by two steel rings embedded in the stone wall. Behind a half-open curtain David saw a toilet and a sink. In the middle of the room was a single stuffed chair, facing a i95os-vintage television set. On the left were a sink, a hot plate, a refrigerator, a cabinet, and a card table, around which were two chairs and two stools.

“Sit,” said Coffin. He opened the cabinet and waved at an array of bottles. “Have a charge? I’m on the tack myself. Old guts can’t take the fury of the juniper berries.”

Confused, Sanders looked at Treece and saw that he was grinning at Coffin.

“I’ll have a spot of rum,” Treece said. “How long’ve you been on the tack?”

“A good while now,” Coffin said. “It’s not hard if you have a disciplined soul.” He looked at Sanders. “For you?”

“A gin and tonic would be fine,” Sanders said.

Gail nodded. “The same. Thank you.”

“Comin’ up.” Coffin took four glasses from the cabinet, filled two of them with Bombay gin-no ice, no tonic-and passed them to David and Gail. The other two he filled with dark Barbados rum. He gave one to Treece, took a long swallow from the other, and sat down.

“I thought you were on the tack,” Treece said.

“I am. Haven’t had a drop of gin in months.

Rum isn’t drinking; it’s survival. Without it, your blood doesn’t circulate proper. That’s a fact.”

Sanders took a sip of the warm gin and suppressed a grimace as the harsh liquid burned his throat.

“S. Tell an old man what brings you by.” Coffin smiled. “Or is this just your day to visit the elderly and infirm?”

Treece reached in his pocket and, without a word, placed the two ampules on the table.

Coffin did not touch them; he simply stared at them and

said nothing. He looked up, first at Treece, then at the Sanderses. His face showed no emotion, but there was something different about his eyes, a shininess that Sanders could not diagnose-excitement, perhaps, or fear. Or both.

Coffin jerked his head toward the Sanderses and said to Treece, “How much do they know?”

“All still know. They found the pieces.” Then Treece told Coffin about Cloche’s proposal to the Sanderses.

“Cheeky bastard,” Coffin said when Treece had finished. “He should have come to me with his million dollars. They’re mine.”

“You’re supposed to be a fool, Adam. Keep it that way. It’s safer. Besides,

Goliath

isn’t registered to you any more. I checked.

Now-truth. How many were there?”

Coffin hesitated. “Truth is a pain in the ass,” he said, holding one of the ampules to the light. “I told the truth once, and damn near got killed for my trouble.”

“Cloche may come and finish the job, Adam, if we don’t get the stuff up and out of there fast. How many were there?”

Coffin finished his glass of rum, reached for the bottle, and refilled his glass. “They were in cigar boxes. Forty-eight to a box, separated by cardboard grids. The manifest said there were ten thousand boxes, and I believe it. I stacked every one of the bloody things by hand.”

“Did the manifest say what was in the glass?”

“No, but we knew. Morphine, mostly. Some raw opium, a bit of Adrenalin. But almost all morphine.”

“No heroin?” Sanders asked.

“No. At least-was

ioo

Gail interrupted. “It’s the same thing.”

“What do you mean?” Sanders said.

“It is. I edited a book about drugs once.

All heroin is, is morphine heated with acetic acid. As soon as it gets into the body, it’s reconverted into morphine.”

“Then why don’t junkies take morphine?”

“It’s not up to them. They take what the pushers push, and the pushers push what the smugglers smuggle.

The smugglers smuggle heroin because they make more money from it: a pound of pure morphine converts into more than a pound of heroin, and you don’t have to take as much heroin because it’s stronger than straight morphine-something to do with the way it gets to the brain.

Anyway, if you figure that from that cargo you could make half a million doses of heroin, street value somewhere between ten and twenty dollars a dose, you’re talking about a total value of five to ten million dollars. Lord!”

Treece said, “Where was it carried, Adam?”

“Number three hold. The lot of it.

Amidships. I had it bagged about with flour.”

“Was there anything beneath it?”

“Aye, the ordnance. We chucked our ballast and put the cases of shells down there. It was a dicey sail, I tell you. One of the mates went in irons for three days for sneaking a cigarette. And that was topside.”

“She didn’t roll over when she went down, did she?”

“Not so far’s I know. But I didn’t

linger to see how she fell.”

“So if her guts were ripped out clean, it’s likely that the

shells went down first and farthest. The cigar boxes would be atop them.”

“Those boxes were wood, remember, and flimsy.

They’d be nothing now.”

Treece nodded. “Still, they’d not have been crushed by the cases of shells. And the ampules’ mass in water is almost nothing, so they’d not have sunk deep in the sand.”

“If you ask me, the storms has busted “em all up by now.”

“I’d have thought so, too.” Treece fingered one of the ampules. “Until these turned up.”

“But they were in a hole, you say, protected. The others is gone, I’ll wager.”

“Like as not. But we’re having a look tonight.”

Coffin drained his glass and banged it on the table.

“Damn fine. I’ll be ready.”

Treece smiled. “No. We’ll go. If we find some more, then we’ll need you.”

“But it’s my ship!” Coffin hammered his chest with a fist. “You think I’m not fit, is that it?”

His eyes were bright, his face flushed from the rum.

“I’m fit as a bloody stallion! How old do you think I am?”

Treece said calmly, “I know how old you are, Adam.”

“You, then,” Coffin said, glaring at Sanders. “How old do you think I am?”