Crackdown (28 page)

“Then at least let me escort you as far as
Addendum,”
I urged her.

She turned her head to look at me. The fire was burning low and its dark light shadowed her face wondrously. “I am not in need of a nursemaid, Nicholas Breakspear.” She always used my full name whenever she wished to chide me, which was usually at those moments when she thought I was exhibiting the cardinal male sin of being over-protective.

“I just want you to be safe,” I explained.

“I want myself to be safe, astonishingly enough,” she said tartly, “so I shall sail away from here on a safely crowded ferry, safely collect some clothes from my apartment, say a safe goodbye to the Literacy Project, then safely disappear on
Addendum.
Does that safe agenda meet with your approval?”

“I’d still rather come with you to make sure that you’ll be all right,” I said stubbornly.

“You’ve no reason to travel to Freeport.” She leaned forward and tried to stir some life into the fire. “I’m a grown woman, not some shivering female in need of protection.”

She was adamant, so late that night I walked to the village and, without Ellen knowing, tried to telephone the Maggot. In truth I had little hope of reaching him, for using the Bahamian inter-island telephone system is akin to bouncing messages through far galaxies towards an alien starship that might or might not exist. The system was a mixture of bakelite telephones, fibre-optics, old-fashioned operators, microwave links, and VHF radios, and it was a rare day that any two components meshed smoothly. However, fate was being kind to me that Sunday night and the whole system worked beautifully and, even more miraculously, the Maggot was actually at home. I asked him a favour, and the Maggot, being a kind man, gave it to me. “But don’t tell Ellen!” I warned him.

“Not a word,” he promised, “not a word.”

Which meant, whether Ellen liked it or not, that I had done the male chauvinist thing, and she was protected.

I slept badly, dreaming of Thessy’s body bumping across the locker’s drowned sill, then of the dying man’s shoes beating the deck like a drummer’s tattoo.

I woke Ellen with my restlessness. For a time we lay silent, listening to the night waves breaking on the reefs beyond the lagoon, and to the clatter of the palm fronds above our grounded boat. The windscoop drifted a fitful breeze through
Masquerade
that stirred the black mesh of the insect screen that Ellen had rigged across the hatchway. “I don’t want Thessy to have died for nothing,” I said at last, explaining my unrest.

“Are you dreaming of revenge, my noble and silly Nick?”

“Yes.”

She traced her fingers across my chest. “Leave it to the law.”

“The law won’t do anything. It’s been corrupted by money.”

“So what will you do?” Ellen challenged me. “Go in shooting? Nick at high noon? Gunfight at the Sea Rat Corral? And you’ll end up just like Thessy, nothing but a mound of dirt in a cemetery.”

“Thessy’s not a mound of dirt,” I protested, “he’s in heaven, where he doesn’t have to read gloomy minor prophets any longer and he gets fried bread and bananas every morning, and God has given him a lovely boat to sail in a challenging wind all day and every day, and he’s got lots of friends and he keeps telling them about this wonderful couple called Nick and Ellen who’ll one day be joining him.”

Ellen laughed, then kissed me, and a tear fell from her cheek on to mine. “So what are you going to do?” she asked softly.

“Nothing.” That sad truth was forced on me by reality, not by inclination. “I don’t even know where to find Sweetman, so I can’t do anything.”

“Good,” she said, then rested her head beside mine. “Sleep now.”

I woke tired, and after breakfast I worked on
Masquerade
while Ellen read her book in the shade of the cradled hull. Her ferry was not due till the evening, but at midday, just as he had promised, the Maggot’s aircraft swept low overhead. Ellen frowned as the dirty plane sank beyond the palm trees. “I hope that’s not who I think it is.”

“The Maggot?” I managed to sound very innocent. “He’s not such a bad fellow.”

“For a maggot,” Ellen said, “he’s a louse.”

Twenty minutes later the Maggot walked up to Bonefish’s yard, looking as innocent as any man wearing an appallingly garish Hawaiian shirt could look. He pretended that he had simply dropped by the island to see me, and feigned surprise on discovering Ellen was with me, though he could not resist imbuing that surprise with a foully suggestive leer. “Having a good time?” he asked Ellen.

She smiled glacially. “Why don’t I leave you two good old boys to grunt at each other in peace. Maybe you could indulge in a mutual grooming session?” She snapped the book shut, and stood ready to leave, but I managed to stop her by feigning a sudden and brilliant idea.

“Are you flying back to Freeport?” I asked the Maggot, knowing full well that he was.

“I sure am, Nick.” It seemed to me that he was over-acting, but Ellen did not notice.

“It’s crazy for you to take the ferry,” I said to Ellen. “You’ll get home much quicker if you fly! And you’ll save money. You won’t charge her, will you, John?”

“Not a red cent,” he said, like the good trooper he had agreed to be, for on the phone he had nobly undertaken not only to fly Ellen to Freeport, but then to drive her from the airport to her apartment, and from her apartment to the marina where
Addendum
was moored. Ellen, whether she wished it or not, was going to be guarded, though whether she would permit the Maggot to drive her round the island once she reached Freeport was debatable. Still, by making the phone call to the Maggot I had done what I could to look after her.

She still hesitated before accepting the Maggot’s offer—though I was certain she would accept—for Ellen disliked the ferries, and flying was a far more convenient method of moving around the islands, but the long duration of her hesitation was an eloquent measure of her dislike for the Maggot. However, she finally nodded and even found it possible to thank him politely. “It’s really very kind of you, Mr Maggovertski.”

“It’s all my pleasure, honey. You’ll be ready in an hour?”

The ‘honey’ put a skim of ice on to Ellen’s voice. “I shall indeed be ready, Mr Maggovertski.”

The Maggot scratched deep in his beard. “Call me Maggot, honey, everyone does.”

“Not me, Mr Maggovertski, not me.” She stalked away.

The Maggot watched her until she was out of earshot then shook his head wistfully. “You lucky bastard, Nick.” He took a half-cigarette from behind his ear and relit it. “I’ve never seen her looking so well! You can just see that she was shrivelling away for lack of a bedding, can’t you now? I know she might be a professor, but under the skin she’s just another bimbo.”

There were times, I thought, when Ellen was entirely accurate in her judgement of the Maggot, but I was still grateful to the huge man, so I ignored his crudities and instead thanked him for donating his time, fuel and aeroplane.

“Hell, Nick, it’s a pleasure. But do you really think you’re in danger?” He sounded very sceptical. When I had telephoned the Maggot I had described my fears of Sweetman’s reprisals, and now I forcefully reiterated my conviction that Ellen was in danger. The Maggot, though plainly reluctant to believe me, was polite enough not to scoff at my tale of possible revenge. He was also curious about the events at Sea Rat Cay, and made me tell him the whole story.

“Have you ever seen
Dream Baby?”
I asked him when I had finished describing the fight on board
Wavebreaker.
I thought it entirely possible that the Maggot might have seen the oddly painted powerboat during one of his flights about the islands.

He shook his head. “I’d remember a boat like that, Nick.”

“You’re sure?”

“You think I could forget a boat called
Dream Baby?
With a camouflage paint job?” He shook his head, then frowned. “Does it matter very much?”

“I’d just like to know where they are, that’s all.”

The Maggot gave my shoulder what he thought was a light punch, but which was more like being whacked by a piledriver. “Don’t worry about where they are, but just make sure they don’t know where
you
are.”

An hour later the three of us walked to the Maggot’s plane that stood baking in the shimmering heat. The plane looked horrible, oil-streaked and filthy, and Ellen shuddered at the sight of it. “Is it safe?” she asked.

“Hell, yes,” the Maggot said. “Mind you, you can never tell what’s safe, can you? I remember when the New Orleans Fruits, that’s the Saints to you, honey, had a fourth and one against us, and they decided to run it, and we reckoned it had to be safe because those toads couldn’t float a fairy fart down a sewer, but—”

“Maggot,” I said, “shut up.”

“I think it’s time we went.” He climbed on to the wing and opened the plane’s door. I helped Ellen up. She was not going to kiss me in front of the Maggot, but she gave me a smile he could not see and, once she was inside the plane, she secretly blew me a kiss.

“I’ll write to you from Florida!” she called.

“Soon! Please!” I called back.

The engines hammered into life, driving scraps of grass and chips of coral back from the propeller’s wash. I stepped back as the plane lurched forward, then watched as it hurtled down the runway and lifted smoothly and safely into the air. The Beechcraft climbed up over Thessy’s grave and I watched my love go, watched till the plane was just a scrap of light in the northern sky, and I went on watching till the faraway plane winked out into distant invisibility. I turned away and felt very much alone, and very much in love.

As it turned out I did have reason to go to Freeport after all, and had I known that good reason I would have had no problem in persuading Ellen to let me accompany her.

Because, once I had watched her fly away, I went to the village post office, which operated in what had once been a chicken shed, to discover that a letter had come to me from McIllvanney’s boatyard. McIllvanney’s secretary, Stella, apologised that she had not sent the money Cutwater Charters owed me for the proctologist’s cruise, but sadly Mr McIllvanney would not authorise the release of any funds until I turned up at the yard to sign the necessary insurance and salvage forms for
Wavebreaker.

I swore in frustration. I should have known that McIllvanney would muck around with the money he owed me! And if I had just visited the post office before taking Ellen to the plane I could have flown with her to Freeport. Now I would have to waste a day and two nights making the journey by ferry.

Poverty dictated that I make the journey so, two days later, I clambered down the pier’s dangerous iron ladder and was carried out to the waiting ferry. I changed boats in Nassau, reaching Freeport early on the Thursday morning. I caught a bus to McIllvanney’s boatyard and found the man himself standing on a floating pontoon next to his sleek forty-two-foot motor yacht called
Junkanoo. Junkanoo
was one of McIllvanney’s own charter boats, but he was plainly about to use her himself for her motor was burbling away and he had been busy untying her stern warp as I arrived. It was also plain that he had company aboard for there was a pile of luggage on
Junkanoo’
s stern deck and I suspected that the pink garment bag and lavender suitcase were not McIllvanney’s choice of travel gear. Leaning on the suitcase was a tennis racket in a lavender slip case that was embroidered with a big initial ‘D’. McIllvanney, it was apparent, had a girl aboard his boat, which perhaps explained the lack of warmth in his welcome. “So what the fock do you want, Breakspear?”

“You wanted me to sign some papers,” I courteously explained my presence. “So here I am.”

“So come back next week, your Holiness.”

“Just forget it,” I walked away from him. “I’m only in town today, and that’s it. So please yourself. I’ll send you a writ for the money you owe me.”

“Wait, you bastard!”

I waited. He made fast
Junkanoo’
s stern warp, then jumped aboard to kill her engine. Almost immediately the door from the main-cabin opened and the tall, fair-haired girl I had met in McIllvanney’s Lucaya apartment walked on to the stern deck. She was still wearing high heels and very little else. She recognised me and gave me a wholesome and welcoming smile. “Nick! It’s just so very good to see you again. How are you doing?” She asked the question with that earnest rising inflection by which Americans seem to imply a genuine curiosity for what is otherwise an entirely formal greeting.

“Very well, thank you, and yourself?” I matched her politeness, but I was also trying to remember the girl’s name. Her body, clad in its barely existent bikini, was entirely unforgettable, but her name had disappeared into the space between the stars.

“I’m doing good, thank you,” the girl said with heartfelt enthusiasm, “real good!”

I still could not place her name, and my only clue was the big ‘D’ embroidered in shiny pink thread on the tennis racket’s lavender case. Debbie? Dolly? Denise? Donna, of course! “It’s very nice to meet you again, Donna,” I said.

“You’re just going to have to forgive me for one little moment, Nick,” she said as though our meeting was the most important thing in her world, then she turned a worried face on McIllvanney. “I just thought you ought to know, Matt, that the air conditioning went off.”

“Of course it went off, you silly cow, because I turned the focking engine off, and you can’t have the air conditioner on unless you’re generating some focking electricity because it drains too much current from the focking battery.”

“Oh! How silly of me! I should have known!” She gave me another gladsome smile, all teeth and sparkle. “Are you coming aboard, Nick? We’ve got some champagne in the cooler.”

“No, he’s focking well not coming on board, he’s coming with me.” McIllvanney jumped on to the pontoon. “Just wait for me, woman.”

“It’s been so good talking with you again, Nick,” Donna called as we walked away.

“Are you poaching the firm’s inventory?” I asked McIllvanney when we were safely out of Donna’s earshot.