Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks (17 page)

“Just a cup of coffee.”

They took a seat at a table some distance from the window.

There was a moment of silence. Darlene was evidently waiting for Harry to speak but he had settled back to let her do all the talking.

At last she said, “You let him get away.”

“I did what I could. Some things I can’t control.”

She did not seem to hear what he said. “You shouldn’t have let him escape. Now you’ll never get him back inside.”

“What’s Matt Braxton to you?”

“Do I have to tell you?”

“This is no court of law, lady, so if you’d rather not tell me don’t. But I hate having my time wasted.”

She picked up a cigarette and tried lighting it with one of those gold lighters that look fine but don’t operate the way they should. The flame flickered erratically and she had to repeatedly fiddle with it before she was satisfied. “We’re lovers. That is, we used to be. He’s a son of a bitch, a real bastard.”

“I kind of got that impression myself.”

“He’s fucking around, but he expects me to remain faithful. He has these eunuchs—well, they’re not really eunuchs but they might as well be—they’re supposed to look out for me.” At this her eyes went to the window. “I don’t know whether they suspect me yet. But he’s still got people following me. Only reason nothing’s happened so far is he thinks me too dumb a broad to worry about. The way he figures it, no one crosses Matt Braxton. No one’s even clever enough to cut him down. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it, to prove he’s wrong. Am I making any sense?”

“I think so.” He recalled the old saying about a woman scorned and the fury she could ignite that hell couldn’t match. Well, there was some truth to the adage.

“If I told you where he’s gone would you be able to do something about it?”

“Depends what you mean by doing something.”

“Look, one of these days he’s going to find out what I’ve done. I told you so far I’m all right. But sooner or later Matt’ll find out and then I’m fucked. There’s no other way to put it, I’m afraid.” In her distractedness she had difficulty concentrating on what she was saying; her gaze was constantly directed on the street or that portion of it that the front window of Kwik-Lunch revealed. “I shouldn’t have taken the Seville. It’s too easy to spot,” she remarked.

Harry tried bringing her back to the subject at hand. “Where is he?”

“Tapaquite,” she answered right away.

“Where the hell’s that?”

“Lesser Antilles, oh, a little south of St. Lucia and St. Vincent but north of Grenada. It’s not much of an island but there’s a thriving tourist business there. I know. Matt took me there a few times. Always business trips, tax deductable. He owns half the island. I don’t know, maybe he owns the whole thing. I wouldn’t be surprised. Where do you think all that money he’s been ripping off from the union pension funds has been going all these years?” She looked triumphantly at Harry, then went on. “He’s been investing in hotels and casinos. Not alone, of course. The Syndicate’s sharing expenses. I don’t know to what extent but they’re involved. They’ve always been involved.”

“Ah, so that’s where the Chicago boys come in.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“So he’s down there. They had a plane waiting for him last night. It took him right there. Of course, it’s hopeless to try to get him back with what do they call it?”

“Extradition proceedings?”

“Extradition proceedings, that’s it. He owns the island, he owns the government. Just a bunch of spades anyway. His word’s law down there. Hell, it’s law up here, too, isn’t it? Every fucking where he goes it’s the same story.”

“I see,” was all that Harry would say.

“So what are you planning to do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, I wish you’d do something fast.”

Harry gave her a wan smile. “You can be sure, Miss Farley, that whatever I decide to do it’ll be fast.”

Harry didn’t wait until Monday to return to the department. He showed up late that same afternoon. Bressler was surprised to see him and not what you’d call exactly pleased. But then again he was never very pleased to see Harry.

“What’s the matter, Harry? Couldn’t stay away from work, you had to come back for the weekend?”

“I’d like to put in a request for a vacation.”

Bressler didn’t frown precisely but he did something with his jaw muscles that approximated a frown.

“A vacation, you say? Take a little time off from duty and you get to enjoying the easy life, is that it?”

In no mood to argue, Harry didn’t respond.

“How long would you be going for?”

“A week. Make it a week and a half. Ten days.”

“OK, tell you what you do. Fill out the forms and get them to me. At this point I don’t see any reason why your request should be denied. Now that this shit on the docks is settled we got a little room to breathe. Harry?”

“What is it?”

“This vacation, where would you be going?”

“The Caribbean.”

Bressler nodded. “Nice place, the Caribbean, especially this season. But I got to tell you, I wouldn’t figure you for lying on a beach collecting a tan.”

“Everyone needs a change.”

“Yeah,” Bressler said as if this were a revelation for him, “I suppose they do.”

C H A P T E R
S i x t e e n

F
rom San Juan Harry caught an Air France plane south to Fort-de-France on Martinique. There he was obliged to wait for four hours for a shuttle to Ocho Rios on Tapaquite. This shuttle was an antiquated Cessna that had seen much better days; it remained aloft only with reluctance, at the mercy of winds that buffeted it about, while below the glistening blue-green waters of the Caribbean remained lovingly tranquil, stirred up only by the occasional fast-moving power boat.

The only other people on board this shaky craft—and there weren’t more than a dozen in all—looked like their purpose in going to Tapaquite was probably not very legitimate. They all bore the appearance of millionaires who having derived their fortunes from shady enterprises had salted the whole lot of it away and were now resolved to indulge themselves with all that untaxed wealth. Their skin was either too white or else floridly red from too sudden an exposure to the tropical sun and their bellies protruded like pregnant women’s. Which was another thing that Harry noticed; only two women were on board—and one of them was the lone stewardess, whose insolent stare caused passengers to think twice before making any requests of her. The other woman was apparently the wife of the Hispanic man sitting next to her; she wasn’t attractive and the husband seemed completely bored with her, preferring to stare out the oval window at the sea than give her the time of day.

Harry had taken the precaution of disguising himself, not wishing to alert Braxton or his henchmen to his presence on the island, not immediately anyway. He’d chosen the same costume he’d worn when meeting with the hitmen Longlegs had introduced him to that afternoon on Fishermen’s Wharf: wig, loud shirt, white ducks. He could have passed as an ambitious entrepreneur, maybe a gun smuggler and or high-priced consultant promoting Caribbean real estate or tax shelter deals on the Cayman Islands, someone who was out to make a killing. Well, that was true in a sense; he was out to make a killing.

The Cessna landed like it flew, with uncertainty. The bump the wheels made on the asphalt surface of the airstrip caused the seats to wobble as though they were soon to pop out of their moorings. The dozen passengers seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief once it was clear that the plane was down, and down to stay.

The airport at Ocho Rios—which was all that the island had to offer in the way of a capital—was a modest affair: two airstrips, neither of them large enough to accomodate a craft larger than the Cessna, and a brand new terminal that appeared to be constructed without the benefit of an architect’s planning; cement ladled over glass.

One customs inspector was all that they had, but then there wasn’t much use for another. There was only one flight into Ocho Rios a day—and that was only in good weather.

This inspector barely glanced at either Harry or at his passport (which like his disguise revealed another identity: James A. Balsam, born in Seattle, Washington). As soon as he was out in the central terminal area he was besieged by a small army of boys and aged men with coconut skins who offered to carry his bags and transport him into the city proper which was a distance of ten miles away. Harry selected one man who could have been thirty or sixty-five, whose face was shadowed by a wide-rimmed straw hat. Despite Harry’s protest, he insisted on grasping hold of his one bag and lugging it out to his cab.

The cab, a dented, obsolete green Ford, circa 1950, looked like it wasn’t going to make it farther than the next block. The windshield was cracked into a web that made viewing through it virtually impossible.

It lumbered and lurched and rattled, this cab, but the damn thing moved, inching laboriously up the hilly road, stirring up a cloud of dust as it went. All the while the driver rambled on, mixing the local patois with a strange brand of English so Harry couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was saying, though he did gather that he was recommending one hotel in town over the other, no doubt because his preferred hotel gave him a commission for each new guest he brought in.

At a sharp bend in the unpaved road, the driver stopped abruptly, gesturing out to Harry’s right. There was a wide stretch of tangled growth, broken here and there by mimosa and palms whose fronds extended almost to blot out the dazzling late afternoon sun; beyond that you couldn’t see much at all. Harry couldn’t understand what it was that so sparked the driver’s interest. All he could make out were the words—“Boca de la Sierpe”—which he repeated incessently.

“What’s there? What should I know about Boca de la Sierpe?”

“Grande casa,” the driver said. “Grande casa de Señor Braxton.”

He didn’t pronounce Braxton correctly but there was no doubting whom he was referring to. Somewhere through the undergrowth then was Braxton’s home-away-from-home. Obviously if this underpaid taxi driver was aware of where Braxton was living then so was everyone else on the island.

“You bring many people here?”

The driver couldn’t comprehend him. Harry did his best to make himself clear but further communication was out of the question. The driver resumed his erratic progress into Ocho Rios.

Tapaquite’s capital was like an Old West town waiting for the gold rush to get to it; there was a Crown Street, a Prince Street, and a Kingston Street, all testifying to a colonial British heritage. Where the three collided a vast square—Plaza de Armas—formed and it was here in this square that all the business, cultural and political life of the city was conducted. Opposite the sprawling porticoed capital building was the Whitby Hotel, a white stucco structure with all its windows shuttered against the intense heat. It was either the Whitby or the Crown Bay which could be found, as its name implied, closer to the shore. The driver advocated the Whitby; Harry took one look at it and decided on the Crown Bay. More inconspicuous, he reasoned. The driver complained furiously but at length relented.

The room given Harry was small and dense with moisture that had seeped in from the bay. Particles of salt had encrusted on the small bureau which, aside from the bed and one chair, was the only piece of furniture in the place. There was one amenity and that was a small balcony that adjoined the room. Harry walked out onto it.

From where he stood, leaning against the rusted railing, he could see the jetty to which three sailboats and several motor launches were tied. Boys were running barefoot from one craft to the next, performing a variety of tasks to ensure that everything was seaworthy.

Now another boat, a sleek fiberglass model—a forty-footer it looked like from this distance—appeared on the horizon and with a sudden slowing of its motors, circled in toward the shore.

Harry watched as it docked and as its passengers, one by one, climbed out onto the jetty. There were a couple of splendid-looking women, gloriously tanned, the sort you see in magazine ads for cosmetics, toiletries, and cigarettes, full of the promise of romance in exchange for the purchase of some commodity or other.

But as arresting as these women were, it was the men that provoked Harry’s interest. Though they had come into port on a pleasure craft and though they were casually attired, in T-shirts, shorts, and sneakers, there was an air of enforced jollity about them. They were not men who could relax easily. Underneath their light jackets and secreted in the canvas bags they carried Harry was sure there were sidearms. He assumed that at any moment Braxton would be stepping out onto the jetty. Another man might remain secluded, fearful of exposure in light of the fact that he was being sought for murder and escape. But not Matt Braxton. For him, hiding would be an admission of cowardice and that was something even the bitterest opponent of the union president had never accused him of.

And sure enough, after another minute or two had passed, Braxton emerged from below deck, one arm lazily curled about the waist of a slender brunette who was in the process of adjusting her bikini top. Except for the color of her hair she could have passed as a duplicate of Darlene Farley.

His retinue protectively surrounding him, Braxton, with a sprightly step, started down the length of the jetty. Harry decided to see just where it was he was headed.

It did not take long to find out; Braxton and his crew had seated themselves in the Leeward Cay, a restaurant-café that looked out onto the shimmering water.

Harry, unobserved by anyone in Braxton’s party, took an inconspicuous position at the bar. There the bartender, a corpulent very swarthy man who hailed from Queens, of all places, told Harry that Braxton and his companions arrived every day at the Cay, and always at the same time: half-past five. Sometimes they would linger on for dinner or go up to the Whitby or else they would go back to Boca de la Sierpe. “He’s getting so bored with this ginmill,” the bartender said, “that he’s thinking of building another just so he’ll have somewhere new to go to.”