"You're taking much for granted," Ethan Humphrey answered, showing off the store-bought pearly whites. "Naturally, I'll see what I can do, but don't expect too much in way of miracles."
"I never do," said Remo, sounding far more sober than when he had spoken just a moment earlier. "I also need a travel agency, trustworthy and reliable, to recommend a native crewman for the next leg of our journey."
"Native crewman?" Humphrey struck a pose right on the stool, pretending that he had to scan his brain for an idea.
In fact, if Remo's instinct was on target, Humphrey was about to set him up with a potential nest of con men, maybe worse.
"There is a certain travel agency," the transplanted New Englander went on. "Trade Winds, the owner calls it. Nothing terribly original, but they arrange for guided tours, pilots, crewmen, anything you need to make your island getaway a memorable experience."
"Sounds perfect," Remo said. "Where do I find them?"
"Bay Street," Ethan Humphrey said. "Are you familiar with the town at all?"
"Just what I've seen since we got in, about an hour ago."
"When you say we...?"
"I have a traveling companion," Remo said. "He's been with my family for years."
"Faithful retainer, eh?"
"Yes," Remo smiled. "Faithful retainer. Exactly."
"I understand, of course." The pearly dentures flashed again. "It does you credit, bringing the old boy along to see the sights on your vacation. There's no Mrs. Rubble, then, if I may be so bold?"
"Not currently," said Remo.
"Ah. Two men out on their own, then, challenging the sea."
"Well..."
"It's the finest way there is to travel." Humphrey leaned in on his elbows, dropping his voice to an almost conspiratorial tone. "Women simply muck up these adventures, don't you find?"
Remo was waiting for the older man's hand to find his thigh and was relieved when Humphrey kept his paws to himself. Apparently, his rapt enthusiasm was restricted to the bounding main.
"I really couldn't tell you," Remo replied. "This is my first time out at sea, I guess you'd say. I mean, I used to take the family sailboat out from Montauk sometimes, in the summers, but it's been a long, long time."
"You never lose the feel, though, do you?" Humphrey didn't wait for a response to his own question. "Being on the water is like dreaming, flying, giving yourself up to magic that's been drawing men away from land since time began."
"You're some enthusiast," said Remo.
Humphrey may have blushed behind the tan, but it was difficult to tell. "Forgive me, please, if I sound maudlin. I'm afraid the sea has always been my one great love. It's difficult for landlubbers to understand, I know. As for myself, I heard the calling early on, but it has only been the past few years, since my retirement from the halls of academia, that I've been able to indulge myself."
"You live here?" asked Remo.
"What, in Puerta Plata?" Humphrey had to think about it for a moment, as if he could not remember his address. "I've been here for a year-or is it eighteen months? No matter. I go where the sea winds blow me, as the spirit moves."
"Some life," said Remo, wondering how much of it was total bullshit.
"Yes," the older man said, beaming back at him, "it is. I'm working on a book about those days. My magnum opus, you might say. There's never been a definitive study of the Caribbean pirates before, the way they lived and died, the reasons why they chose an outlaw life."
"About that travel agent," Remo said, "if you could let me have the address..."
"Of course," said Humphrey, coming back as if Remo had summoned him from dreamland. "It's at number 20 Bay Street." He rattled off the directions and was disappointed when Remo called it a night, claiming he needed to be up early.
"Of course, I understand," Humphrey said, giving Remo a final glimpse of false teeth. "Good sailing, then."
Outside, the night was cooling down. Streetlights were few and far between, but Remo did not mind darkness. Even if he hadn't been able to expand his pupils to make catlike use of the ambient light, a handy Sinanju skill, he still would have been able to find his way back to the harbor by following his nose and keeping to the streets that ran downhill. The handful of pedestrians ignored him as he made his way toward the waterfront.
As Remo walked, he thought about his conversation with Ethan Humphrey, the old man's fascination with pirates and their lawless lifestyle. It was a little odd, but not freaky-odd, Remo decided. A professor of history who kept up with his hobby in retirement, finding a way to blend study with relaxation in a pleasant tropical climate-it didn't seem so peculiar. Still...
The muffled scream distracted him. Remo went in search of it. He might save a damsel in distress and that would be his good deed for the year, or it might be a trap, some kind of setup. He hadn't been subtle in his questions, here or in the other ports of call where they had briefly stopped along the way. There was at least an outside possibility that someone, possibly the very men he sought, would try to take him out and end this unpleasant undercover work.
Please be a trap, please be a trap, he thought as he stepped into the brooding shadows of an alley, the source of the scream.
Chapter 8
The alley looked and smelled like any of a thousand others Remo had explored as a teenager, as a Newark cop, or during his years with CURE. Bare dirt and gravel under foot. A reek of garbage that had nearly liquefied when no one bothered to collect it. Scuttling, feral sounds of rats or scrawny kittens as they foraged in the trash for something edible. This night, though, this alley held the muffled sobbing of a terrified woman and the gruff, excited voices of her tormentors.
Remo made no conscious attempt to camouflage his approach, but some of his earliest training with Chiun had taught him to move with effortless silence. His soon-to-be adversaries huddled in the blackness at the far end of the alley. Remo counted four of them by their voices. It was a lengthy dead-end alley, Remo saw, with no escape for their intended victim-or for them, now that he stood behind them, cutting off their only access to the street. The alley made as good a killing pen as he had ever seen. Three of the men were Remo's height or shorter, average for the Caribbean mixed breed they represented, while the fourth and nearest to his left stood six foot five or better. Remo guessed the hulking mugger's altitude had marked him as a freak from adolescence, opening him up to taunts and ridicule that would have led him into fights and taught him to rely upon his strength and size for settling arguments.
All four were dressed in peasant shirts and baggy trousers. Mr. Big displayed patches on his rump. One of the men, on Remo's right, had picked up a Malcolm X cap somewhere; he wore it backward, at an angle, the curled bill half covering his neck, the faded X resembling a target on the back of his skull.
Remo caught a glimpse of their victim, and that's when he wanted to start shouting profanities. The woman cornered in the stinking alleyway was Stacy Armitage.
In fact, Remo wasn't tremendously surprised, just ticked off. Their conversation back in Maryland had left him thinking that she was the ambitious type, likely to make an attempt to solve the mystery herself, and now here she was, ass deep in alligators, waiting for a sympathetic knight to come along and rescue her.
Of course, that wasn't fair. From what Remo saw-the blouse torn open to expose one breast, the dark smudge of a bruise on Stacy's cheek-she hadn't counted on the rough reception she was getting in Puerta Plata. She probably hadn't set him up for this, he decided. Even so, there was a moment when he thought of leaving her to sort things out herself-enjoy the benefits of amateur sleuthing with limited resources and no one to back her up in the event that she encountered trouble.
A couple of the thugs were talking back and forth in Spanish, chuckling at some not-so-private joke, and all were keeping their eyes on the woman.
Remo didn't bother to dredge up his bare minimum of Spanish, all of it learned from constant repetition from Chiun's Mexican soaps. He didn't even know what it meant. Probably, "and now, a word from our sponsors." So instead he said, in English, "Is this a private game, or can anybody play?"
The four thugs spun in unison, as if they choreographed it.
"Nice footwork," Remo said. "But it's so sad to see how far the Four Tops have fallen since their years as pop music superstars."
The Four Tops stopped being surprised almost immediately and started being angry. Stacy Armitage showed a mixture of relief, desperation and stark surprise in her features. Remo became grudgingly convinced she hadn't been expecting him-or anyone-to come along and save her from the evil-smelling gang.
The tallest attacker was first to find his voice. Whatever he said was unintelligible, but Remo had no difficulty with the tone. It was a warning, a threat, telling Remo that the girl belonged to him and his buddies and possibly suggesting Remo should get wise and run away.
"Don't speak the lingo, sorry," Remo told them. "All sounds the same to me, you want to know the truth."
"Joo got big prublem, gringo," said the weasel in the backward cap.
Remo addressed the English-speaker. "Are you being anti-Semitic? Can't we stop the hate? You know I was going to cut you guys some slack and let you walk, but now you've gone and pissed me off."