Around dusk, with the weather turned almost cool, I drove east on Bay Street and took the right onto the dirt road that led to de Marigny’s chicken farm. The gas gauge needle was on E, so I hoped Curtis Thompson was around to provide me with “petrol,” or I’d be hoofing it back to town.
When I pulled into the crushed-rock driveway of the almost ramshackle limestone farmhouse, I knew at once something was wrong: six or eight of de Marigny’s native helpers, in their somewhat tattered work clothes and straw hats, were milling around, wide-eyed, looking like a Stepin Fetchit convention.
Nearby was a black police car, parked on the grass near the cut-down oil drum where not so long ago I’d seen the Count and his men scalding the feathers off dead chickens; the fire was unlit today, but something was in the air, even if it wasn’t smoke.
I hopped out of the Chevy and approached the milling men.
“What’s up, fellas? Where’s Curtis?”
They looked at each other, nervously; several were shaking their heads. Fear and anger mingled in their dark faces.
“Where the hell is Curtis? What are the cops doing here?”
One of them, a kid perhaps eighteen with sad, smart eyes, said, “Dose son of a bitches take Curtis out back.”
“Where out back?”
Another stepped forward, chin jutting bravely; he pointed. “Dat toolshed back dere. Two white cops from de U.S.A.”
Melchen and Barker-law enforcement’s favorite vaudeville team.
“Are they alone?” I asked. “Did any Nassau cops come along?”
They shook their heads, no.
“Not even a colored driver?”
They kept shaking their heads in the negative.
Those two bastards coming out here alone wasn’t a good sign. On the other hand, it did make my job easier….
“You fellas stay here,” I said. “If any other cops show up, come running and tell me.”
The toolshed was well in back of the house, near where the yard ended and forest began; a limestone building a shade smaller than a one-car garage, the shed had a thatch roof and a dirt-caked window on each wall. I looked in the nearest window but all I saw was a fat back in a white sweat-soaked shirt. Both no doubt belonged to Melchen.
I looked in another smudgy window and got the picture: Melchen was standing, hands on hips, watching as Barker stood barking at Curtis Thompson, who was sitting in an old wooden chair, his hands tied behind him with wire, his ankles bound the same way, to the rungs.
The shed itself was pretty sparse-some shelves of tools and jars of nails and such; some feed bags; some bales of wire, from which they’d probably got what they bound Curtis with. The floor was hard dirt.
Both cops were in rolled-up shirtsleeves, ties loose, no shoulder holsters in sight-which made me smile….
Barker paused and Curtis-his handsome ebony face streaked with blood, his mouth and his left eye looking puffy-said nothing. Barker slapped him savagely.
I went around to the door. On the ground to one side, neatly folded, were the men’s two suitcoats. Brutality and tidiness going hand in hand. Just beyond the weathered door I was facing, Barker stood with his back to me, working Curtis over.
I could hear what Barker was saying, through the cracked, ancient wood.
“De Marigny’s going to hang, anyhow, and you’ll be smack out of work! Be a good little darkie-cooperate and we’ll see you get a new job, a good job….”
Curtis said nothing.
Melchen’s Southern-fried voice kicked in: “All you got to do, boy, is say you drove de Marigny out to Westbourne the night of the murder. You didn’t take no part in it-you didn’t know what he was up to…you just sat in the car and waited for him.”
“Curtis,” Barker said in a mock civil tone, “maybe you need your memory jogged a little more….”
That was when I kicked the door down.
It tore right off its rusty hinges, splintering, and fell straight onto Barker, flattening him; Barker and the door falling knocked Curtis back and down, and left him tied in his chair, on his back, gaping up at me.
Melchen was glaring at me in shock and outrage as light burst into the gloomy little room and so did I.
“Heller! What the fuck are you-”
“You call this the third degree? We invented the third degree in Chicago. Perhaps you ladies need a demonstration.”
“You’re under arrest, asshole!” Melchen sputtered, moving toward me with fists raised.
I kicked him in the balls.
He was doubled over screaming when I dragged Barker out from under the door; he was only half-conscious, so I helped him wake up by slapping him around a little.
Then I shoved him over onto the feed sacks; the Duke of Windsor’s lanky fingerprint expert sprawled there stupidly, his mouth hanging open and a little bloody drool trickling out.
Fatboy Melchen, whose face was streaked with tears, had recovered somewhat and charged me like a bull; his big hard head ground into the pit of my stomach and the air went out of me like a blown-out tire. But I stayed on my feet and belted him in the side of the head, weakly, winded as I was, though it was enough to distract him.
Gasping but better, I straightened him up and slammed a fist into the center of his fat face; the crunch of his nose was a sweet sound. He tumbled backward, hit some shelving, and jars of nails and nuts and bolts rained on him; he sat down hard, breathing the same way. He looked up at me, wondering if he should get up again.
“Mister!”
It was Curtis, warning me that Barker was getting up off the feed bags; the warning helped, because I turned, but it didn’t keep me from getting tackled by the tall, loose-limbed cop. He pushed me onto the fallen door and started throwing punches into my midsection. I grabbed a handful of his greasy hair, yanked his head back and gave him a forearm in the throat.
He let go of me, rolling off; then he was like a bug on its back, as he struggled to breathe, hands on his throat as if trying to strangle himself. I got back on my feet, but so had Melchen, who had found a wrench amongst the tools and was looking at me with a face running with blood from his mashed nose. His eyes looked crazed.
“I’m goin’ to kill you, you Yankee son of a bitch!”
The wrench cut the air, and I ducked, and it cut the air again, even more viciously, with an arcing swoosh, and I ducked again, and Melchen was smiling through the blood streaming down over his piglike teeth, enjoying himself.
Barker was on his knees, as if praying, and with one hand on his throat and the other gesturing wildly, he wheezed to his partner, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him…witnesses…too many witnesses….”
Barker caught Melchen’s attention with this touching speech, briefly, and that was when I kicked the fat fuck in the balls again.
His howl filled the little room, and he dropped to his knees, clutched himself and bawled like a baby. Which is exactly what I’d have done in his place.
I picked up the wrench and walked over to Barker, who was still on his knees. Curtis, on the floor in his chair, was grinning like a fox in the henhouse.
“No…don’t…” Barker whimpered. He didn’t look like such a tough Hollywood-type copper now. His hands assumed a praying position. Seeing him beg like that would’ve made me laugh, if it hadn’t made me sick.
I tossed the wrench over on the feed bags.
“Get up and help your partner to his feet.” I righted Curtis and his chair. “You mind if I let ’em go in the farmhouse and wash themselves up?”
Curtis said, “Dat’s fine.”
“Go on,” I told Barker. “Go make yourselves presentable.”
Barker helped Melchen up and out of the shack; the tall cop gathered their suitcoats, then with an arm supporting Melchen, hobbled toward the farmhouse, through a laughing gauntlet of black faces. The native workers had gathered in the backyard to watch and listen to the fight, and now they were applauding and cheering at the sight of the two battered white cops.
I undid the wire from Curtis’ wrists and ankles. “Sorry about the door.”
“Dat’s easy fixed, boss. Dey work over dis face of mine much longer, it be too broke to fix.”
“Well, let’s get you inside and cleaned up, too.”
“Wait till dey go, mon.”
“Okay.”
We stood near the house and waited for Barker and Melchen to come down the back porch stairs from the kitchen. The two had washed the blood and dirt from themselves, but their clothes, beneath their perfect suitcoats, were mussed and torn. Melchen was holding a bloody handkerchief to his broken nose.
The natives were milling, but no longer laughing; the sight of the two burning-with-anger cops returned them to a more servile mode.
Barker stepped close. “You’re not going to get away with this, Heller. This is assault.”
“What you did to Curtis is assault. What I did is a public service.”
“We’re officially sanctioned investigators here,” Melchen said, petulantly, nasally, bloody hanky still pressed to his face.
“Maybe so,” I said. “And if you want to go public with this, swell. I witnessed you attempting to beat and bribe this witness into giving false testimony. If any of this gets out, you’ll both be on the next banana boat back to Miami.”
Barker said, very quietly, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, Heller.”
“Sure I do. A couple of crooked cops in Meyer Lansky’s pocket.”
Barker reacted as if I’d slapped him again.
Then I smiled and put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Look-we should be pals. After all, we have so much in common: you don’t play by the rules and neither do I.”
“Don’t fuck with us, Heller.”
“Fuck with me, girls, and you’ll wake up as dead as Arthur. You do remember Arthur, don’t you? The native night watchman who drowned accidentally at Lyford Cay?”
Barker and Melchen exchanged worried glances, then glared at me, to preserve what little dignity they had left, and limped off to their police car. They departed in a cloud of gravel dust, and to more native applause and derisive howls.
“You go in and clean yourself up, Curtis. Then I need some gas for the Chevy-the Count said you could help me out.”
“Sure t’ing,” Curtis said. “You wanna go get de gas cans yourself, and fill ’er up, while I’m inside?”
“All right. Where are they?”
Curtis grinned whitely. “In de toolshed-back of de feed bags.”
No smells of cooking beckoned me through the open windows of Marjorie Bristol’s cottage. Otherwise, the evening was its usual beautifully Bahamian self: perfect sky, scattered stars, a full moon making the ivory sand and gray-blue ocean seem as unreal and lovely as an artist’s vision. All this and a cool, soothing breeze-and the humidity had taken the night off.
I knocked and she greeted me with a smile; but it was a smile I’d never seen from her before: sad and reserved and…careful.
Then I noticed: she was wearing the blue maid’s uniform I’d first seen her in.
“I’m sorry,” she said, showing me in. She gestured to the round table, which lacked even its usual bowl of cut flowers. “I know I told you I’d cook for you tonight, but I’m afraid I…got busy.”
“Hey, that’s fine. You’ve been too generous with your culinary skills already. Why don’t we go out somewhere?”
She sat across the table from me, and smiled again, that same sad smile; she shook her head. “A white man and a colored gal? I don’t think so, Nathan.”
“I hear there’s a Chinese joint on the corner of Market Street where blacks and whites can mix and mingle to their heart’s content. What do you say?”
She smiled again, tightly; her eyes hadn’t met mine since I got here.
“Marjorie-what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
She sat staring at her own folded hands for what seemed an eternity; finally she spoke.
“Lady Eunice asked me to open Westbourne today,” she said. “That’s why I’ve been busy.”
“Oh,” I said.
I should have anticipated this; Nancy had told me that her mother was staying at another of their Nassau residences, Maxwellton, but with de Marigny’s preliminary hearing coming up, friends and relatives-witnesses, in many instances-were beginning to arrive on the island. The larger facilities at Westbourne would be needed.
She stood and began to pace, hands folded in front of her, brow creased.
I got up, went to her, stopped her aimless moving, put one hand on her waist, and lifted her chin and made her look at me. Her eyes were moist.
“Lady Oakes doesn’t approve of you helping me, does she?” I asked.
She swallowed, and shook her head, no.
She said, softly, weakly, “Somebody told her about my bein’ with you when Arthur’s body was found. Somebody else told her they saw us drivin’ in your car together.”
“And, what? She’s forbidden you to help me?”
She nodded. “Or her daughter.”
I winced in confusion. “But I understood Nancy and her mother were getting along pretty well, considering.”
“Lady Eunice, she just doesn’t want her family pulled apart any more than it already is.”
“And she’s convinced Freddie’s the man who murdered her husband.”
“She’s…adamant about it. She says hangin’ is too good for that philanderin’ so-and-so.”
I smirked mirthlessly. “Does she want him hanged for killing Sir Harry? Or for running around on her daughter?”
She shook her head vigorously, as if she not only didn’t want to talk about it further, she didn’t want to think about it, either. She pulled away from me, turned her back; she was slumped, her posture caving in on itself.
“I can’t be helpin’ you anymore, Nathan.”
I came up behind her, put a hand on her shoulder; she flinched, but then she touched my hand briefly with hers.
“Nathan-my family and me, we depend on Lady Eunice for our livin’. I cannot go against my Lady. Do you understand?”
“Well, sure…but that’s okay. I didn’t want you involved anymore, anyway, what with Arthur’s murder and all. I talked to Curtis Thompson this afternoon, and he’s going to check around for Samuel and that other missing boy.”
She laughed once, hollowly, turned and faced me, but stepped back a little, to put some distance between us. “Do you really think either of those boys is still in the islands? They’ve flown like birds, Nathan. They be long gone.”
“You’re probably right. Is it a problem meeting here? You know, now that Lady Oakes will be around. Maybe there’s some…neutral place we can meet….”
She swallowed hard and her eyes were welling with tears. “You don’t understand, do you? I can’t be seein’ you no more. For any reason. Not anymore.”
I stepped forward, and she moved back.
“Don’t be silly, Marjorie. We mean something to each other….”
She laughed bitterly. “You can’t be serious. I’m just a summer romance to you, Nathan Heller. Just a…shipboard romance, without the ship.”
“Don’t say that-”
Her jaw went firm and yet trembled. “Can you ask me back to Chicago, to live with you? Can I ask you to stay here with me in Nassau? Would your family, would your friends, accept a girl like me? Would my family, my friends, want a white boy like you around?”
I shook my head; I felt thunderstruck. “I admit I haven’t thought any of that through…but Marjorie, what we have is special, very special…on the beach…”
“The beach was very nice.” A tear rolled down her cream-in-the-coffee-brown cheek. “I won’t say it wasn’t. I won’t make a lie of the sweet truth of that. But Nathan…I got a brother! I got a brother who wants to make something of himself. He’s going to go to college. But he needs my help to do it. And I need Lady Eunice to help him.”
Now I swallowed. “So we’re quits then?”
She nodded, once.
“I’m just a…summer fling to you, Marjorie? Is that it? Something that just…happened? During carnal hours?”
“Yes.”
She brushed the tear from her cheek with a thumb; then she brushed the tear from my cheek, and kissed me there, and showed me to the door.
For maybe five minutes, maybe half an hour, I stood on the beach and watched the ocean; looked at the moon. Looked at the moon reflect on the ocean. Watched a land crab scuttle by; and all I did was smile at the goddamn thing.
Then I headed for the Chevy in the country club lot and drove to the B.C., where the man at the front desk told me I had till tomorrow noon to get out.
“The owner of the hotel has requested that you leave,” the white clerk said.
“Lady Oakes, you mean.”
“Lady Oakes,” he said.