He still appeared unafraid, though he knew that if he were found guilty, this same jury would decide his fate during the penalty phase of the trial, death in the gas chamber or life in prison without possibility of parole.
Somewhere inside he must be afraid, the judge thought, just as I am probably afraid somewhere inside, and I’m thirty years older with very little to lose and no one to mourn my losing it.
Sweat streamed down the judge’s face. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe it off, and a garlic capsule rolled out on the floor. He picked it up, popped it in his mouth and began to chew. “Garlic,” the manager of the health food store told him, “regenerates the bile ducts, the blood, the bowels.” The judge was aware that these same claims were made for a dozen other products on the shelves, but proving fraud would be difficult since it was impossible to tell whether one’s bile ducts were regenerating or degenerating. No matter. The garlic served its real purpose, generating privacy.
He closed his eyes and imagined the blackboard again and the eraser wiping out the words and a picture beginning to appear. The picture this time was the face of Cully King smiling at him, friendly, almost benign, as though he didn’t blame anyone for his predicament and he hoped no one would blame him.
Where did this man’s confidence come from? Certainly not from his background, which could only have taught him to be wary and suspicious. Born in St. John, he had run away to sea at twelve and spent his adolescence in and out of the waterfront dives and rum shops of the Caribbean, doing nearly every kind of job on nearly every kind of vessel. The skin of a white man exposed for that many years to sun and wind would carry the scars of old cancers and the keratoids that signaled others to come. But Cully King’s face was smooth and placid as a pond. There were no worry lines from storms at sea, no reminders of bordello brawls or arguments settled by knives or bull pistols. He had survived unmarked, as if he had wiped out bad memories just as the eraser had wiped out the words on the judge’s blackboard.
The judge finished chewing the capsule, and the smell of garlic drifted under the door into his secretary’s office, where it competed with the scent of Estée Lauder’s Youth-Dew.
It was no contest. Estée was beaten by a nose.
Court resumed at one-forty in the afternoon. The time was duly noted by Eva Foster in her book; then she crossed the area between the judge and the counsel table, carrying a Bible.
“Please state your full name for the record and spell the last one.”
“Peter Gray Belasco. B-E-L-A-S-C-O.”
“Raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the matter now pending before this court, so help you God?”
“I do.”
“Please be seated.”
Belasco took his place in the witness box. A tall, wiry man in his late fifties with a habitual sun squint.
Belasco’s full beard stretched at the corners in a brief, friendly smile directed at Cully. Then he turned his attention back to the district attorney.
“Where do you reside. Mr. Belasco?”
“Santa Felicia, Sixty-eight Rosalita Lane.”
“And what is your occupation?”
“Mining engineer, retired. More accurately, semiretired.”
“How long have you been retired or semiretired?”
“Fourteen years.”
“Have you found any special hobby to occupy your time?”
“I race my yacht, Bewitched.”
“Will you describe this yacht for the benefit of the jury?”
“It is an aluminum ketch eighty-five feet long.”
“Where do you race this yacht?”
“Wherever there’s a race I can get to. All over the world, actually.”
“Such as?”
“New York to Bermuda. Sydney to Hobart. Fastnet off the southwest coast of England. Transpac from here to Honolulu. That’s the race I was preparing to enter before this misfortune occurred.”
“Have you ever won any of these races?”
“No, never even came close. But at least I never sank her. We arrived first in the Transpac a couple of years ago but because of our handicap had to settle for fourth place.”
“How is a handicap computed in a yacht race?”
“It’s a time handicap based on the size of the ship and the amount of sail carried. A smaller ship might come in a day later than Bewitched and still be declared the winner.”
“This yacht, the Bewitched, how would you describe it?”
“As I said, it’s an aluminum ketch eighty-five feet from bow to stern.”
“Did you, last spring, compete in a race from Nassau to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do after the race?”
“Commiserated with my crew — we came in last — and then flew home to California. I have too many pressing business interests here to allow me to spend all my time sailing.”
“What arrangements did you make for your boat?”
“Cully King is my skipper, and I told him to bring her back here through the Panama Canal.”
“Is King in the courtroom at this time?”
“Yes, sir. He’s sitting over there. First-rate skipper, knows the boat well and is very competent.”
“We need not dwell on the ability of Mr. King to do his job.” The district attorney gave Belasco a cold sour look to remind him that he was a witness for the prosecution, not a press agent for the defense. “You had a contract with Mr. King to bring the boat back here?”
“Yes.”
“And what were the financial arrangements of this agreement?”
“It is customary to pay a skipper by the mile, a dollar, a dollar-fifty, two dollars. I offered Cully top price, two-fifty, because I have a great deal of money invested in the Bewitched.”
“Approximately how long is the journey by sea from St. Thomas to Santa Felicia?”
“It varies with weather conditions. Four thousand miles is a close estimate.”
“So Mr. King earned approximately twelve thousand dollars.”
“Yes, but out of that he will have to pay his crew. With only three men aboard, the Bewitched is tight-handed, and the men must work long, hard hours and be paid accordingly. There is some danger involved as well as hard work. Along the west coast of Central America, because of political unrest, passing vessels are sometimes chased, brought back to port and detained. In view of all this, I expect Harry Arnold and his son to get a sizable portion of the twelve thousand dollars. So far it’s all just theoretical since I haven’t had a chance to pay anybody anything.”
Once more he smiled at Cully King, and Cully returned the smile. The exchange annoyed and aggravated the twitch at one corner of Owen’s mouth. Right from the beginning he had disliked Belasco, whom he privately referred to as a rich bleeding-heart liberal like Donnelly, a socialist, a possible dope smuggler, even a spy. Why did he have to race all over the world? Why couldn’t he race up and down the coast like a normal person?
When he spoke again, his voice was tight. “How long does the journey from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to Santa Felicia take?”
“Again, it depends on the weather. There are favorable winds, the trades, from St. Thomas to Colón, that’s about a thousand miles, roughly one week. There are often delays at the Canal, where the ships pile up, waiting their turn like the planes at a large airport. Panama is the crossroads of international shipping. From Panama to Mazatlán there are areas of calm, but north from Mazatlán you often run into head winds. Time must be allowed for provision and fuel stops. Altogether I’d say the voyage takes a month. The duration of this particular one is documented in the log of the Bewitched right down to the last minute. But that log is not in my possession. You have it.”