Shooting Script

'Ibeg your pardon?' He looked annoyed.

This was carrying Jamaican disinterest in the rest of the Caribbean a bit far.

'Jiminez, for Christ's sake. The rebel leader in the República Libra. Diego must have been his son.'

He glanced at the sergeant. 'You didn't hearthis-?'

Tveheard of the man Jiminez, sir,' the sergeant said – a little reluctantly. 'But I hadn't seen the passport, of course, sir.'

The inspector glared down at the passport as if it should have Son of well-known rebel leader stamped on it. 'This is a Venezuelan passport.'

I said: 'So his mother's family was Venezuelan. And probably loaded. That's maybe where Jiminez is getting his backing. And you let him in here, without noticing a thing.'

'I wasn't teaching him to fly,' he said stiffly.

Then I knew where all my troubles had come from. The FBI knew who Diego was, the Repúblicaknew. It just hadn'toccurred to them I could be stupid enough not to know. So I'd been written down as a rebel.

So I'd lost the Dove.

Then I remembered something else and swung round on J.B. 'You must have had his name on a contract. He was working for-'

'No. He wasn't on contract – Eady plan, you remember? He was strictly off the budget, just helping out for drinks and expenses.'

I frowned at her, at the ambulance, finally back at the inspector.

He said: 'How did you mean – this changes the case?'

'My God – I was teaching him to fly twins. He must have been planning to fly arms or something into the República-and they guessed it.'

He made a noise in his throat. 'So you think he was -assassinated?' he asked distastefully.

'Well, at least it's a thought.'

He did some deep detecting on the thought, then smiled. 'But that would mean sending in a… a murderer, probably by airline. Andthat would mean trying to carry a shotgun through the Customs. They couldn't-'

'Forgetabout shotguns. Haven't you ever heard of a snake pistol?'

He hadn't; not on an island where the mongoose is the problem.

I sighed. 'Just take an ordinary revolver – a thirty-eight or bigger – bore out the rifling, pull the bullets out of the cartridges. Put in a wad, fill them up with birdshot, seal them with wax or soap – and you've got a shotgun pistol. Spreads enough to kill a snake at twenty paces with a snap shot. And it'll kill men at short range – if you're the sort who couldn't hit a battalion of barn doors at ten feet.

'Andit'll fit in your pocketand it doesn't make any more noise than an ordinary thirty-eight. And the Republica's snake country.'

There was a long hush while everybody looked at me.

Then the inspector said: 'How do you happen to know this, Mr Carr?'

J.B. said quickly: 'You don't have to answer-'

'The hell with that. I converted my own revolver in Korea. I'm a lousy pistol shot; with a snake gun at least I could kill snakes.'

The inspector turned to the sergeant. 'You didn't happen to know about snake pistols, did you?'

The sergeant gave me a reproachful stare, then shook his head. 'No, sir,' he said sadly.

The inspector came back to me. 'Some people might think you withheld this significant information for a remarkable time.'

'Some people might think / was supposed to be the detective around here.'

His eyes glittered. 'You wouldn't happen to carry a snake pistol these days?'

Steam started to come out of J.B.'s ears. I just smiled sweetly.

Luiz said quickly: 'Inspector, my friend – let me make a small suggestion. Possibly you should not worry so much about Señor Carr, but go and ring one of your ministers and tell him that you have a murder which will, tomorrow, bring the Venezuelan consul, a rich family in Caracas, quite possibly the Repúblicaand most certainly some American newsmen from Miami – all asking awkward questions.'

The inspector stared. He hadn't thought about the international aspect of Diego's death – no local would. But no island is an island.

Luiz smiled with infinite Spanish sadness. 'Politics, you1 know, my friend.'

The inspector suddenly knew. He held the wordpolitics on his tongue a moment, despising the taste of it. Then, reluctantly, he swallowed.

'None of you will be leaving Jamaica, of course,' he said officially.

'We got a picture to finish,' J.B. pointed out.

'Ha. Very well – you can go.' He swung around and marched off towards the terminal. The sergeant gave me a final sad look, and ambled after.

Luiz watched them go, then said: 'We've got a companycar outside. Can we drop you?'

The jeep was back in the cargo shed, being crawled over by experts. I nodded, and we walked slowly back across the bright loading bay.

J.B. said suddenly: 'We got a public relations angle of our own to figure out. I don't want anybody trying to tie the Boss Man in with a revolution.'

'Just don't let him write Diego's murder into the script, then,' I suggested.

Luiz made a wincing noise.

Halfway round the sandspit road into Kingston, J.B. said: 'Tell the driver where you want to be dropped.'

But away from the police, I'd hadurneto catch up on my thinking. About time, too.

I said: 'I think I'll come all the way with you. I'd like a word with Whitmore.'

'He'll be asleep by the time we get in.'

'No -1 don't think so. And if he is – well, you'll just have to wake him.'

She said, shocked: 'We can't dothat.'

'Just tell him I've finally woken up myself.'

After a time, she leant forward and told the driver to go straight through for the north coast.

SEVENTEEN

It was one in the morning by the time we got to Oranariz, but there was a glow of light from the back of the bungalow. J.B. led the way round and up on to the patio.

Whitmore was sitting, stretched in his usual chair beside the refrigerator, and wrapped in a weird mixture of beach clothes and Bolivar Smith clothes, topped with an oily old beaded-and-fringed Red Indian jacket. He had a bottle of rye whisky at one side, a heap of account books, scripts, and western novels at the other.

He saw me, squinted in surprise, then said evenly: 'Hi, fella. Beer or whisky?'

'Both.'

'Bad as that, huh?'

I just shrugged. Luiz walked across and opened the refrigerator door, Whitmore did his bottle-opening act, and tossed over a Red Stripe. Luiz found glasses and poured shots of rye for J.B. and my other hand.

She had flopped into a chair, suddenly white and drained. She took a gulp at the whisky, then said rapidly: 'Well, it's true, all right. He must've got killed soon after Luiz left him last night. Seems he got shot with a "snake pistol" – Carr figured that out. Apparently it's some sort of-'

'I know snake guns,' Whitmore said. He glanced at me, then back at J.B. 'So what did the cops say?'

'They took statements. They tried to walk over Carr a bit, but all they got was sore feet. That's about all. Except one piece of news: it seems Diego was really-'

'Hold on, ' I said, Til tell this part.'

Everybody looked at me: Whitmore and Luiz with calm professional faces, J.B. widi a series of expressions that were probably just her exercising her face. Then she nodded and took another gulp of whisky.

I said: 'Diego was Jiminez's son. And you knew it all along.'

I hadn't expected a vast reaction, not from these three. What I got was exactly nothing. The two actors went on looking like studio pictures of themselves, J.B. went on nuzzling her glass.

Then Whitmore said calmly: 'Why d'you think that, fella?'

Suddenly what I was going to say seemed ridiculous out here on a quiet patio overlooking the dark sea, with no sound but the gurgling of the refrigerator, the hums and bumps of insects beating themselves on the lights along the patio roof.

I drank quickly from both hands and said: 'That trip we did to Santo Bartolemeo-'

'You suggested that yourself,' Luiz said.

'Oh, I remember. You know, I was rather disappointed, thatfirst day on location; I thought I hadn't seen any real acting. I was wrong; I saw some great acting. That question was a pure frame. You asked me for the nearest Spanish-style locations: you knew Ihad to say the República. And you asked me for somebody who spoke perfect Spanish. Another frame: you already knew I knew Diego; that was just a way of getting him up here without surprising me.'