Fortunately, we had taken enough time to do things up as right as possible. I managed to rustle up a couple of sheets from the hut where we had spent the night and rigged a crawl space so that the one who wasn't rowing could get some refuge from the sun after we managed to extricate ourselves from the somber grayness that enveloped the Cluster. Hannah found two plastic bottles of water, a knife, two cans of tuna and a plastic sack full of dried prunes. The journals were wrapped in a sheet of stained rubber from the diving hut, and at midmorning we shoved off. I denote midmorning only because Gibby's Pulsar had finally given up the ghost in the salt bath of the previous day. I considered presenting it to some passing flounder but decided to keep it for whatever reason one holds on to reminders of his bitter past.
It was late afternoon with the sun in the fourth quadrant. We had both picked up a fistful of blisters and a colossal case of Caribbean sunburn. Hannah had just retired to the sanctuary of the cotton canopy over the rear of the dugout, and I was manfully aiming us toward a bank of cumulus clouds to the northeast. If I was right, Negril was getting its usual afternoon respite from the Caribbean sun under that distant bank of fleecy whites. I was so intent on my objective that I didn't see the once small speck on the horizon materialize into a full blown, card-carrying, bona fide yacht.
Further proof that there is a God came in the form of Harry and Cherry Morgan, a slightly tipsy pair of frolicking fun-seekers from upstate New York. They had, from all outward appearances, both the time and the money to bring their 44 footer to the Negrilian waters for the holidays.
At the outset it was obvious Harry wasn't all that excited about picking up a floating vagrant with a coral-distorted face and a blistered body. It must have been Cherry's maternal instincts, because she insisted that her husband "bring that poor man aboard." Then when Hannah emerged from the canopy in her own version of abbreviated attire, Harry warmed up to the whole situation.
Hannah painted a colorful, if somewhat farfetched, scenario about us being two newlyweds from Peoria who had the misfortune of running aground on one of the out islands. Even I could have bought the story until she added the part about us buying the pathetic little craft from two entrepreneurial Jamaican fishermen and setting out for our resort haven in Negril. Harry was enough of a salt to know the story had more holes in it than a bachelor's checking account, but he was ogling Hannah's long legs and otherwise obvious attributes, probably figuring the risk was worth the reward. Cherry, on the other hand, had a vertiable drugstore on board with a healthy supply of ointments and salves designed to soothe what I still laughingly called my body.
Over Harry's protests that he would happily tow our dugout if we so desired, Hannah cut the tiny craft adrift and in the process probably created still another mystery in the long line of unexplained disappearances that the region had become famous for. Harry offered us a drink, and when Cherry broke out the Scotch, I annointed them both as a class act and for the first time in days felt like a human being with at least a modicum of appreciation for my fellow man.
Everything was going right now. Harry docked at a small marina tucked back in the sheer walls just around the jetty from Rick's. We exchanged addresses, promised to meet them there next Christmas and vowed our undying gratitude. Hannah gave Harry a hug, Cherry gave Harry a dirty look, and we hustled off.
Mookie didn't even recognize me at first, but when he did, he found someone to take his place behind the bar. Somehow he managed to stack us in his 300 SL and within another ten minutes had us ensconced in his well-appointed pad in what the locals called "The Development."
It didn't take long for me to fill him in. The news about Queet upset him; he didn't know Sargent and had been spared the unpleasant experience of knowing Huntington. Hannah, meanwhile, had disappeared, looking for a bath. It was only after she let out a delighted squeal at a closet full of feminine things that Mookie sheepishly admitted that Bluebell might have left a thing or two behind.
Hannah found a mesh jumpsuit that fit perfectly and accentuated more than a few of the lady's basic qualities. She took time to fashion her hair into something resembling a beehive on the top of her sunburned head, peeled the Scotch out of my protective grasp and slumped down in a chair across the room. Despite the wear and tear, she still managed to look dynamite.
While all of this was happening, I made a couple of aborted attempts to get through to Lucy and inquired what Mookie knew about Portamaine.
He had his feet up on the coffee table, watching Hannah. I knew he heard me though he was acting like he hadn't.
"Portamaine," I repeated. "What's the word?"
"I don't know what the hell you're into, Elliott, but I can tell you one thing. You've got no business screwin' around in Portamaine."
"Tight ship, huh?"
"Damn right it's tight. Alonzo Zercher keeps the entire town under lock and key, and the key is in his jockstrap. You can't even buy a Red Top there without him knowing about it."
"How active is that little airstrip?"
Mookie's darkly brooding features somehow managed to get darker. "Look, Elliott, I'm tellin' you — don't fuck with it. That's a big, underline big, operation. Those people play for high stakes, and they play for keeps."
"They've got something of mine," I said pettishly.
"Let 'em keep it," Mookie advised. "Go buy yourself another one."
"What Elliott is trying to tell you is that unless he recovers those cylinders and delivers them back to his crusty old boss in Clearwater, he's out seventy-five green ones." Having duly informed Mookie of the magnitude of my problem, Hannah gave him a playful wink and returned to her drink.
Mookie let out an appreciative whistle. "The amount impresses me, but what you have to do to get it doesn't. Elliott, now that Deechapal is temporarily closed down, Zercher is using Portamaine as his main base of operations. That way he can make sure nobody is messin' around with his cache out on the island."
Sitting there exchanging pleasantries with Mookie wasn't getting the job done. It was entirely possible that Marshal had already put his ill-gotten gains aboard something with wings and hustled it back to the mainland. Logic was telling me that even though Marshal probably thought we were dead, the longer we dallied, the less likely we were to being able to put a stop to him opening one of those cylinders.
"Look, Mook, I need a car, some money and some enforcement."
"You're out of your goddamn mind," Mookie sighed. "Three men have already died. Ain't that enough?"
"Got no choice," I said. "What my friend Hannah here didn't tell you is that if we don't find those cylinders pretty quick, there may not be a Negril to worry about."
Hannah looked up over her drink. "As much as I hate to admit it, Mookie, we've got no choice. We've got to try."
Portamaine isn't now, and never has been, much more than a grease spot on a pockmarked road. There is one intersection in the village, a "Y" corner, where the main road continues on up toward Montego Bay and the other bends back through the heavily populated village only to end up on a small secluded bay. The trouble is, the airstrip is on the other side of Alonzo Zercher's 12 foot high chain link fence.
Long before Alonzo Zercher had turned Portamaine into his personal bastion for illegal drug activities, I had poked around along the beach area of the sleepy little village and actually used parts of it in my third novel. That was back in the days when Coop was still teaching me how to write and long before the fence went up. I point this out only to illustrate that I had a passing familiarity with this remote little section of Jamaica. Coupled with the fact that Mookie had located and armed us with a couple of still functioning antiques, a World War Two .38/200 Enfield and an early model Ruger Blackhawk, I felt somewhat ready.