Читать книгу When the Pirate Prays - James B. Johnson - Страница 7

2: MONDAY, 7:00 A.M.

We came in the east wing door of the Inn, along the high-ceilinged hall, arguing as usual.

“I think John Wayne’s Alamo movie was best,” I said, picking up the conversation we were in the middle of when the governor joined us.

Tapes snorted. “With Frankie Avalon in it?”

I had nothing against Frankie, but he’d never won any Oscars, or Grammys for that matter. “The Walt Disney one had Buddy Ebsen in it,” I pointed out.

“It also had Mike Fink and the other Davy Crockett stuff John Wayne conveniently left out.” Tapes slung water off his brow.

I couldn’t argue that, so I said, “I can’t argue that. But how about this: Richard Boone was in the Duke’s version.”

We passed rooms on each side, the doors topped by old-fashioned transoms. Seemingly as an afterthought, somebody had installed fire-sprinklers and the assorted PVC and hardware right on the high ceiling of the passageway. The José Gaspar Inn was built sometime around the twenties and echoed that style. Old-timey carpeting in the corridors, high ceilings, big rooms with giant paddle fans. Bogart in Latin America, sitting there smoking and drinking, overhead fan moving slowly. Atmosphere. This hotel had four wings laid out on the cardinal points.

We’d checked in yesterday evening and had a ground floor room; since it wasn’t tourist season or tarpon tournament time, the sallow-faced manager who’d assigned us the room had told me that all the guests were staying downstairs along this east wing hall. And the permanent residents, like himself—and, I guess, Governor Gonzáles—lived on the third and top floor.

“That’s not fair,” Tapes said, “nobody can top Richard Boone.”

“See, I told you so,” I said, and somebody screamed.

I just knew it was a female-in-terror scream like you hear in the movies.

Wrong.

We hustled down the corridor and in the middle where the wings adjoin and the grand staircase zigzags up to the third floor, we found the governor—make that the late governor—and a man standing over him.

The man had screamed. He was a dapper little man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a bow tie.

He whimpered lower this time, evoking the memory of his louder scream.

Tapes and I skidded to a stop.

“Uh oh,” I said.

Tapes said nothing.

Henry Beauchamps Gonzáles had been a living, thriving human being not minutes ago sharing human concerns with us. Like “rapidly dissipated” and the weather.

Still dressed in his wet jogging outfit, he lay there at the foot of the stairwell very dead. His neck was askew.

“He told us he was no meteorologist,” I said, the words and thought inane, but it was all I could think to say.

His slicked back hair was mussed and drying.

I knelt quickly and apprehensively, gulped a lot, and checked the pulse at his neck. None. Not with his neck bent and twisted like that.

“There,” Tapes said and pointed.

Following his line of sight, I saw the railing at the top of the stairs on the third floor broken and splintered.

The guy standing next to us had been frozen to this time. He whimpered again.

“Look,” I said. “Move to the left a bit.”

Tapes did so. “Oh, shit.”

So did the geek.

He started moaning in higher squeals, drowning out a motor.

There was a big red streak across Gonzáles’ forehead, the skin stripped back on each side.

Again I pointed.

Off to the side, where it had obviously fallen, was a tennis racquet, a blue and orange tennis racquet, with an alligator ghost painted on the racquet’s sweet spot, obviously the gator mascot/symbol of the University of Florida. One curve of the racquet was bloody.

“What do you call the top corner arc of a tennis racquet?” I asked. “On an ear, it’s the helix,”

Tapes shrugged. He didn’t share my penchant for oddball terms and expressions.

The manager slewed to a stop alongside the geek who was moaning. Silas Smith, the manager, wore plaid slacks and a white shirt. His sallow face was yellow. There were deep scars on his neck. He was so ugly he ought to wear a mask. I’d bet he’d had one hellacious childhood. His first concern was the squealing geek, but then Smith saw the governor.

Other people were coming down the halls and in from the wings.

An overly pregnant woman waddled toward us from the kitchen wing, eyes bulging, fist jammed into her mouth, and eyes fixated on the body.

A hefty guy who looked like an ex-NFL lineman in a T-shirt and brown slacks with a dark stripe down each side lurched from the opposite wing where the bar and lounge were located.

More people entered from the lobby and some came from the rooms behind us down the corridor we’d just walked.

“Ohmygod!” said Silas Smith, his hand against his mouth in a parody of a cliché. “Governor Gonzáles fell.” His voice was octaves higher than it had been last night.

“Not necessarily,” I said, still squatting there. I smelled the storm rain on the body and oddly it made the gorge rise in my throat. I stood and fought back the nausea. Gonzáles was dead and had just been alive talking and riding with me and Tapes. It was an odd juxtaposition to think about. We’d discussed Plutarch and the weather. Jeez.

The big bulky guy shoved his way through. “Let me in, I’m lawn forcement.” He had a bottle of Yukon Jack liquor in his hand and his eyes were bloodshot and his breath foul, and he was unshaven. He staggered up to me. “Just exactly what the fuck’s goin’ on here?” He looked down at me suspiciously.

“You got a murder on your hands, officer,” I said mildly.

“I’m ‘Trooper,’ and how the fuck do you know it’s murder, Shorty?” His eyes focused on me then shifted to the body.

Now I greatly dislike anybody making fun of my inordinate lack of great height. I always like to think of myself as a younger Alan Ladd without the highwater pants; what with a similar height, my hair and a certain jut of jaw give that impression if you’re real creative in your mind’s eye.

“I saw it on a Magnum rerun,” I shot back at Trooper while wondering if Tapes could take him. Tapes was skinny enough to bathe in a shotgun barrel, but he was deceptively strong. Also, he was about a foot taller than me. Not to mention he usually got us out of the trouble my mouth got us into. “You can check him, he’s rapidly assuming room temperature,” I said quoting the guy on the radio.

Trooper’s face blanched and three guys who hadn’t shaved more than the trooper and wore hunting camouflage gear edged up behind him. They were obviously curious and rude, because they pushed an old lady out of their way.

Turning to Silas Smith, I said, “You’d better call the law.” I glanced at Trooper. “The real law.”

Trooper snarled. “I’m the governor’s fucking bodyguard, Shorty. I’ll make the decisions here.”

“You did a wonderful job,” I said, regretting the dig immediately.

Trooper started to reach for me then something changed on his face. “Didjou say he’s dead?”

“You could draw that conclusion.”

Trooper’s face fell, beef turning to bristly jowls, a tear actually eeking from his right eye. He sniffled. “Henry B. was my friend.” Trooper’s voice sounded strangled.

“Call the law,” I told Smith again.

“Oh, God, I’ll do it.” He trotted down the hall toward the front desk.

The geek’s teeth were chattering.

“What happened?” I asked.

He put four left fingers into his mouth and his eyes were still bulging, locked onto the body.

“Tell us,” I said.

“I…I don’t know. I was walking to breakfast and…there he was on the floor.”

Silas Smith returned.

He shook his head and his voice had regained some calm. “I can’t call out. Phones are out from the storm. We’re running on our own generator even.”

“My CB’s broken,” I said. “Any cell phones?”

Nobody responded.

“The cellular sites usually take the first hits on the mainland,” Smith said. “This is a bad reception area anyway.”

“Well, send somebody,” I said.

This handsome woman whose face was ashen shook her head. “The two sheriff’s deputies are on the mainland for shift change.” She hiccupped. I’d watched her last night. She’d been the center of a small party in the lounge. A “divorce party” Silas Smith had told me. The pregnant woman and the old lady were part of it, her friends, this intriguing woman, helping her celebrate her divorce. It had seemed to me more like a wake; however, she’d grabbed my attention with a bold look. The lady hiccupped again.

If she was March on a swimsuit calendar, you’d never get to April. She was wearing a pair of prairie shorts, made of Chamois leather, revealing an acre of tan legs. A loose blouse of the same material exposed a strip of slim and tan waist. Last night she’d worn a lip-licking yellow cross-back knit dress with a swirl-like skirt. She hiccupped again.

One of the camo-dressed guys said, “The bridge washed out a little while ago.”

As usual paying attention to what’s happening around me and especially intriguing women who show a lot of class, I knew that the star of the divorce party was named Mary Lynn and, with a couple of the others at the party, hadn’t gone home last night because they had too much to drink and didn’t want to drive in the building storm. So they got rooms at the Inn.

Looking around at the different people, I thought at least there was room at this Inn. Which gave me an associative thought and I eyed the pregnant woman. She was standing there staring, her breathing ragged. Well, Gonzáles wasn’t his old self. Not everybody gets to view a newly dead governor.

Trooper was just standing there; face scrunched up, eyes watery. Realization had paralyzed him.

The only person moving was the old lady. She was already on the first turn of the broad stairs heading upwards.

Well, at least somebody had something on the ball.

To Trooper, I said, “You’d best insure nobody disturbs the evidence for now.”

“What are we gonna do with him?” Trooper’s voice was a plaintive cry.

Edging through the crowd, I hit the stairs, my Nikes doing better than the old lady’s pumps.

We made it to the third floor at the same time.

Nothing.

An overturned table against the wall, a busted railing, and a puddle of water, most likely from Gonzáles standing there dripping. I thought again of a life snuffed and the gorge rose once more.

The old lady was eyeing me and moving around looking at things.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be up here messing around,” I said, words serving to repel the fluctuating nausea.

“Says who?” she asked with an eye cocked at me. “Did the governor leave you in charge before he died?”

I shook my head. “Just common sense.”

“You’re the one they call Shortcut, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“I’m not.”

“You talk and dress like a cowboy. I didn’t think there were any cowboys left.”

“I used to be; I’m not any longer.”

“What are you now?”

“Unemployed,” I said and thought, and running from a woman.

“Why is it that you look like a gill-caught fish?”

“Beats me.” I shrugged and finally controlled my emotions. “I was shocked at the governor’s death, that’s all. I’d just been talking to him. He was a living, breathing person and now he’s a corpse.”

“Ghoulish, aren’t you?” Her other eye nailed me. “You were talking to him? You saw it happen?”

“No. We were coming down the corridor after letting him off at the front door.”

“You and that tall cowboy?”

“Yep. He’s not a cowboy any longer; though once you clamp a steer’s ear or dip a cow, I guess it stays with you. He’s a mothballer.”

The old lady shook her head. There was a beehive of gray hair neatly atop it. Her face was not wrinkled like you’d think. And she was a shade taller than me, not a hard thing to be.

“A mothballer? Surely you take advantage of an old lady.”

“No, it’s true. In Tucson, for the Air Farce. He decommissions aircraft and prepares them for what’s called the Boneyard.”

“Let me get this straight,” she said, springing fingers up. She began ticking them off one at a time. “You’re unemployed, yet on this semi-remote and relatively unknown island for some unknown reason—”

“Not at all, we were visiting the lighthouses.”

“Right,” she said and ticked another finger down. “You know nobody, and you were with Henry B. just before he died. It’s all very suspicious.”

“Who are you and why all these questions?” I said.

“I, sir, am Angela Maple,” she said with a harrumph in her voice. “Who are you?”

“Shortcut.”

“I mean, what’s your name?”

“Shortcut.”

“I need all the information I can get.”

I groaned. “Why don’t we leave the investigating to the authorities?”

“What authorities?” she asked.

“Beats me. Trooper?”

She harrumphed again. “Trooper’s an alkie. Henry B. kept him on because of loyalty to a friend; he’s not much of a bodyguard.”

Suddenly, I realized I was dealing with a pretty shrewd woman. Aggravating, but intelligent. She’d been thinking while I was reacting. “You know, Mrs. Maple—”

“Mizz.”

“Sure, whatever. If we’ve no authorities and we’re stuck here, we’ve a problem. We’ve a dead governor, the outside world doesn’t know it, and he’s not going to get any, ah, fresher the longer he lays down there.”

“Lies,” she corrected. “But we’ve got the lieutenant governor here, too. And Henry B.’s chief aides.”

“Then it ain’t our problem,” I countered. “Let ’em sort it out.”

Gingerly she stepped to the broken railing. “He’s down there now.”

I figured she meant the lieutenant governor.

We were both waltzing about, not saying the one thing we both thought.

Ms. Maple looked at me. “I wonder who killed him?”

“And why,” I added.

“There’s the other thing, too,” she said.

“No authorities, no crime scene investigation; when the storm passes, everybody will be gone.”

“That about sizes it up,” she said.

Somebody had deliberately murdered the governor of the fourth largest state in the United States and was going to get away with it—more than likely—because a storm was bottling us all up, and keeping others away.

On the wall next to the overturned table was a rack from which hung several tennis racquets.

She started down the steps. “Let’s go see what the future governor has to say.”

“Right.” As she went down, I knelt and studied the floor. No clues. In all the movies there’s always a clue. Shows to go you real life ain’t like they show us on the big screen—or the small screen, for that matter. By now Perry Mason would’ve had Paul Drake headed in the right direction.

I flipped my finger in the puddle of water, absently tasted it, and wiped my finger on a wrinkle in the wall-to-banister rug. No pack of matches with a bar name, no cigarette with lipstick, no feather, no boot mark, no nothing.

Ms. Maple was standing a few steps down the staircase, her face level with this landing, watching me intently.

It occurred to me this was something me and Tapes didn’t need to get involved in badly. We were outsiders and most of these people were local; that’s a no-win situation.

But Henry B., she’d called him.

I’d worked a while in Tallahassee and never thought much about the governor. I’d disagreed with much of his politics—hell, I disagree with most politicians’ politics. Politicians are people we pay who hire other people to spend our money.

But he’d sat right there in the crowded cab of my GT and sweated from running and talked about the weather. Everybody talks about the weather.