“Sold.”
She gave a twenty-dollar bill to Edmund and the coin to me; I slipped it in my pocket.
“This guy from Abaco,” I said, “what’s his name?”
He shrugged; his eyes were rheumy. Too much ganja. “Dunno, mon. Just a colored fella who need help with his boat.”
“Not somebody who comes around here often?”
“No, sir.”
Before long, Di and I were back in the cabin of the motor yacht; Daniel was up on the bridge, taking us back to Nassau on a glass-smooth sea. The night beyond our windows was dark. The cabin was dark. But the leather of the sofa we lay on was so white, it seemed to glow.
“Did we find something, do you think?” she asked.
“Buried treasure? I don’t know.”
“You look…confused.”
“It’s a look I often get. I wake up with this look.”
She was lying on top of me; we were both clothed, though I had taken off my coat and my holstered gun. I might have been aboard the Lady Diane, but Lady Diane was aboard me.
“I didn’t mean to confuse things,” she said.
“It’s just that this…voodoo stuff, and Sir Harry catting around, and stolen gold coins…none of this fits in with other things I know.”
“Such as?”
Her blond hair was brushing my face. It smelled good.
I didn’t really want to get into this with her. “Well…all of that involves some things and some people that are a little outside your royal circles.”
She stuck her chin out snootily. “Oh? Such as?”
Okay, then. Insistent little know-it-all rich bitch….
“A New York gangster named Meyer Lansky, who’s got some kind of connection to the murder. What exactly, I can’t figure.”
“Oh. Him.”
I sat up, pushing her gently off as I narrowed my eyes at her. Now she was sitting beside me, looking at me like a schoolgirl who got caught with cigarettes in her lunchbox.
“You’ve heard of Meyer Lansky?”
She shrugged. “I’ve met him. He’s friendly with Harold Christie.”
“Harold Christie doesn’t say so.”
“Well, he is. I understand Harold accepted a ‘gift’ of a cool million from Mr. Lansky, in return for certain services.”
I mimicked her: “Such as?”
“Such as convincing the Duke and Sir Harry to go along with Mr. Lansky’s plans to build casinos in Nassau and on Grand Bahama Island.”
Back to square one!
“Is it possible,” I asked, “that Sir Harry would have balked at that prospect?”
“Very possible. I would say probable. Harry didn’t much care for tourists-and the casinos, and modern resort hotels that would make stiff competition for his B.C., would’ve gone up in his very neighborhood. Right on Cable Beach.”
“But I understand Sir Harry didn’t have the power to block the casinos….”
That made her smile. “Sir Harry and Harold Christie were in all sorts of financial beds together. The Duke, too. I think to underestimate Harry’s power in that regard would have been a serious miscalculation.”
Now we really were back to square one: who needed gold-stealing voodoo-killer cuckolds with Harold Christie around? Or had Christie hired some native to perform a ritualistic-style killing? Or had those two Lansky goons, at Christie’s behest, tried to leave a misleading obeah-style calling card?
Whatever the case, we were back to a Harold Christie who was so tied to Sir Harry Oakes that the only way to get around him was to remove him.
She was still smiling, but more pleased than amused, now. “Heller-suddenly you don’t look so confused.”
She began unbuttoning her blouse. She undid her artillery-shells bra and unleashed those impossible breasts, round, firm, tiny coral tips inviting kisses; my mouth accepted the invitation.
“What about Daniel?” I asked, as she loomed over me.
The bridge was closed off, but he was right up a few steps, on the other side of the door.
“Let him get his own girl,” she said, stepping out of her slacks, then her panties.
The yacht’s motor thrummed as she buried her face in my lap, reclaiming her ownership, and before long, in the near-darkness of the cabin, her flesh a ghostly white, she sat on top of me, grinding, head back, eyes shut, hair swaying, moving hypnotically, as lost in herself as I was, moaning and gasping and shuddering, her slim, top-heavy body undulating like a dancer on drugs, working herself to a fever pitch and animalistic cries that put those natives around the bonfire to shame.
22
After hours in Godfrey Higgs’ modest Bay Street second-floor office, his secretary long gone, the affable, athletic-looking lawyer sat behind a battle-scarred desk with his feet up, vest unbuttoned and tie loosened, jacket over the chair. His hands were locked behind his head, making wings of his arms and elbows.
He was smiling, but it was a frozen smile, a crack in his oval face; his parted-in-the-middle dark hair, usually slicked back, fell wearily over his forehead.
“Perhaps I’m no judge,” he said, “this being my first major criminal case…but I can’t imagine a better, more diligent, thorough investigator than yourself.”
“Thanks,” I said. I was reclining on his leather couch against a pebbled-glass-and-wood wall. His offices were not unlike those of A-1’s back home. The only light came from the green-shaded banker’s lamp on Higgs’ desk; that, and some neon glow from busy Bay Street outside the window behind him. It was close to eight o’clock and neither of us had had supper.
“However,” he began.
I groaned. “I knew there would be either a ‘however’ or a ‘but’ in there somewhere.”
“However, very little of what you’ve come up with is usable, or even admissible, in court.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t say that,” I said, doing a serviceable imitation of Peavy on The Great Gildersleeve.
That made Higgs chuckle. “All right-I’ll grant you your expert witness is damn near the backbone of our case…between what you came up with regarding the time limitations of the crime, and what Professor Keeler will have to say about the fingerprint evidence, we may well be able to clear Freddie.”
“Let’s not forget Captain Sears,” I pointed out. “His placing Christie in downtown Nassau when Christie says he was sleeping at Westbourne diverts suspicion from our client.”
“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t have generalized. It’s just so damned frustrating that so much of what you’ve dug up isn’t going to make it into court….”
“Like what?”
He hauled his feet off his desk, brushed his hair back in place, shrugged, just a little. “The crime syndicate connection. Everything you’ve put together linking Lansky and Christie…we simply can’t establish relevance.”
I sighed. “If that caretaker out at Lyford Cay hadn’t ‘accidentally drowned,’ we could.”
“What we need to discredit Christie,” Higgs said, “is for your friend’s letter to show.”
He was referring to the letter Eliot had sent me over two weeks ago, containing the certified copy of the federal records indicating that outstanding warrant against Christie; but it had not yet arrived.
And we now knew it most likely wouldn’t: Eliot’s letter, like any letter arriving in Nassau, was subject to wartime censorship; it seemed likely the censorship board-populated with Christie cronies-was withholding it. Contacting the censors directly about the letter was against regulations, and there was not time, before the trial, to have Eliot run the red-tape hurdles for a second time.
Higgs asked, “You haven’t had any luck establishing that Sir Harry was a rounder, either, have you?”
I shook my head no. “I’ve asked some questions, but here’s where my limitation as an outsider really hurts us. You might be better off putting a local dick on it.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Frankly-no offense meant-but I have. He’s come up with nothing, either. He runs into the adultery rumor, now and again, but no substantiation. And as for the gold coins…” He shrugged again. “Another dead end.”