“As little as humanly possible,” I replied. I reached my hand out and shook his. “It’s nice to see you again, Assistant Superintendant. Is it still Assistant Superintendant?” I asked with a smile.
Most of the other guests, along with Finch, were dressed relatively informally, with slacks and a dress shirt being the norm for the gentlemen and dresses for the ladies. Javier, however, had his uniform on. “It is still Assistant Superintendant, at least for the moment,” he responded with a smile.
“You are still in uniform?”
“It was a long day. I was still handling details from this weekend.”
A third man came up, along with a woman. They were both in their forties, and he had the look of somebody who thought he was important. He also had a big white smile on his dark brown face. He promptly put out his hand, and said, “And you, young man, are the reason for all those details. When you go fishing, you go after the big fish, don’t you?”
I shook his hand, and so did Marilyn. “If you ask my wife, Marilyn, she’ll tell you my fishing license has been cancelled.”
“For good!” chimed in Marilyn.
That got everybody laughing. At that point, Finch announced our presence to the rest of the room, and then introduced everybody. To be perfectly honest, I forgot all of their names almost as soon as I met them, but I was polite. The important looking man who had joked about fishing was the local Member of Parliament for Eleuthera, sort of the equivalent to the local Congressman back home. Jonathan Finch was a member in good standing of the local Big Shots Club. Also present was the Mayor of Governors Harbor, a couple of members of the local town council, a banker, and a couple of other business types. Most of them had their wives with them, and most of them were black, which wasn’t surprising, since it is a majority black country. Only the banker and one of the other businessmen were white. Javier was the only man without a wife at his side.
Also present was a face I had seen the other night, though he was alone, also. I eyed him curiously. “We met the other evening, didn’t we?”
He nodded and smiled. “You remember! Michael Westcott of the Guardian. My editors want me to do a follow-up piece. How are your injuries?”
I simply smiled at him. “Injuries? What injuries?”
“Are you saying you didn’t get half a dozen stitches at the clinic early Saturday morning?”
I smiled and looked over at my wife. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
She gave me a dirty look. “Very funny. Don’t make me the bad guy.” She turned back to Westcott. “My husband is in fine shape. If he did receive any stitches, they are healing just fine. If he ever pulls a stunt like this again, I’ll give him some stitches he won’t be laughing about!”
He laughed. “So you aren’t happy about this?”
She snorted. “My husband is a brave and heroic man, but there are times I wish he wasn’t so brave and heroic. He scared the daylights out of me!”
“So, tell me what really happened that night,” he pushed.
He might have been the local stringer for a very sleepy island, but Mister Westcott knew the questions to ask. “Okay, here’s the bottom line. I came out of the bathroom and heard my wife scream. That’s when I saw a guy running towards me with her purse, so I stopped him. Then the other two attacked me, so I had to stop them also. One of them had a knife, but he didn’t really hurt me.”
“Your cane — did you hurt your leg?”
“No, not at all. I injured that last year. Really, if I hadn’t heard Marilyn scream, I’d have been happy to just let things be. I’m actually a very peaceful guy. I think you should be talking to Assistant Superintendant Javier. I think he’s done the really hard work here.”
“How so?” By now the MP and the Mayor were near us and listening in.
“Well, the easy part was stopping them and capturing them. He was able to link them to all these other crimes, including a murder. That’s really good police work, and is a lot tougher than just catching a few bad guys. Because of him, they are all going to jail, right?”
“For a very long time!” answered the Member of Parliament. He started pontificating about the wonders of the Bahamian justice system, and I was happy to let him run with it.
Dinner was a number of local seafood dishes and vegetables, all done with some interesting island spices. The cook proved to be Mrs. Wilkes, and when Finch told us this, Marilyn and I both commented that we should have had her cook a meal or two for us. Throughout dinner, we assured everyone of the same talking points from our first interview with the reporters at the clinic — ‘These things happen!’, ‘Everybody has been so nice!’, and ‘It’s been so friendly and peaceful!’ It was a little more political than I would have liked, but what can you expect when you are dining with politicians.
I did have an interesting conversation with Javier, who was seated across from me at the table. “So, Assistant Superintendant, I’m not all that familiar with your title. Is Assistant Superintendant a rank or a position?”
He nodded in understanding. “We use standard British ranks in the Royal Bahamian Police. You start out as a Constable, then you move up to the Corporal and Sergeant ranks, and then to Inspector and Chief Inspector, then to Assistant Superintendant. I think the closest thing to your thinking might be Lieutenant or Captain. I am the second ranking officer assigned to Eleuthera. Superintendant Musselwhite is in Nassau right now.”
“Well, the next time we visit, maybe you’ll have a different title.”
“Maybe,” he said with a smile.
The Mayor had to chime in with that. “You’ll have to hire Mister Buckman here as your constable. He can catch them and you can send them to jail.”
“Don’t give my husband any more ideas!” warned Marilyn.
I simply shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know, hun. You have to admit, the working conditions seem pretty nice.” Marilyn pushed me in the arm and everybody laughed. I just shrugged theatrically to the others. “I think the Assistant Superintendant is going to have to catch his own criminals.”
“That’s more like it!” she agreed.
Marilyn answered a few questions about our family and home, and also a few about my service in the army. She was the one who told them about my black belts and the Bronze Star and my leg, which I would have been happy to let slide by. I could see the reporter’s eyes widen, and knew he had more stuff to feed his editor for the next edition.
All in all it proved an enjoyable evening, and certainly beat going out to a restaurant. We assured one and all how much we enjoyed the Bahamas and that we would certainly return some day. Then we thanked our host and beat feet. We were both tired and needed some sleep. Tomorrow morning we were flying out, back to the real world.
Chapter 69: Home
The flight home Tuesday morning was uneventful. We woke up and hustled to get our bags packed. Thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Wilkes, we had very little in the way of dirty clothes, so we just dumped that in one bag and packed the clean clothes in the others. We also had a bag of some souvenirs for Marilyn’s family, and a little steel drum to bang on for Charlie. He was a little young, but hey, all kids like to play the drums!
Jim and Samantha were flying us again in the Learjet. When Samantha asked if she should sit up front with Jim again, Marilyn turned a dozen shades of red and sputtered out an incoherent, “That won’t be necessary!” I just laughed until I turned red myself. My wife said, “I can’t believe the things you get me to do!”