Vincent nodded. “Ah, who indeed!”
Fletcher left the building wondering just why Colonel Vincent should have found the name of the boat unusual but certainly not funny, and why he should have thought it necessary to give that warning not to talk about it.
But no answers floated to the surface.
THREE:
HAPPY DREAMS
Joby was dozing in his boat when Fletcher got back to the pier, but he woke up quickly as Fletcher stepped down into the cockpit.
“Began to think they’d arrested you.”
“I had that feeling myself once or twice.”
“So what’s happening?”
“I’m leaving it to them. A man named Arthur W. Vincent has it in hand. He’s a colonel of police.”
“I know,” Joby said.
Fletcher was surprised. “You know him?”
“Not personally,” Joby said. “I know about him; everybody in Jamestown does. He’s Clayton Rodgers’s right hand man, and there’s some that say he’s a bigger bastard than Rodgers himself. Though personally I’d need to have proof of that before I’d believe it possible.”
Fletcher was even more surprised. He had never heard Joby quite so outspoken on the subject of President Clayton Rodgers, and it was the kind of talk that could make bad trouble for the speaker if ever it got to the wrong ears. So it just showed how much Joby had come to trust him.
It was, of course, no news to Fletcher that there were plenty of people on the island who would have been only too pleased to see President Rodgers in his coffin, and there were probably a lot who would have been perfectly willing to put him there if only they could have got near enough to him to do something about it. But Rodgers was not an easy man to assassinate; he had the power that goes with absolute rule and complete control of the police. He also had his own private army of thugs known as the Leopards.
Clayton Rodgers was a big, fat, jovial man of forty who had studied law in the United States. He had come to power by a clever manipulation of the ballot box, which had finally left the democratic machinery in a desperately run-down condition and the President firmly established as a highly autocratic head of state. In office he had continued to consolidate his position with considerable backing from the U.S. Treasury, the flow of dollars from which had been skilfully guided into those channels most favoured by the President himself and which critics considered not altogether to the benefit of the islanders as a whole.
It was said moreover that the C.I.A. kept a sharp eye on affairs and were happy to lend support to President Rodgers for fear that if he should fall the alternative might be communism on the Cuban model. To the C.I.A. virtual dictatorship by a right-wing head of state was infinitely preferable to a left-wing government, however benevolent. And of course there were many who benefited from the existing state of things. Tourists — mainly Americans — were a rich source of income; and tourists had an unfortunate habit of avoiding places where the political climate was unsettled and shots were likely to be fired in the streets. Those who made money out of the tourist industry didn’t, as a general rule, give a damn what happened to those others who were out of work and near starvation. Joby Thomas himself of course profited from the American visitors, but apparently this fact did not make him an uncritical supporter of the President.
He started the engine and got the boat moving away from the pier and out into the bay. The shores of the bay were shaped like a horseshoe, with Jamestown on the inner curve. Port Morgan, where Joby lived, was near the tip of the eastern prong of the horseshoe and had once been a haunt of buccaneers, and later a naval dockyard. It had been prosperous in those days, but there were no buccaneers now and the dockyard was quietly decaying, as indeed the whole place seemed to be.
From Jamestown to Port Morgan across the bay was a distance of about a mile and a half, but by road, round the curve of the shore, it was nearly three times as far. People who did not own cars — and that included the greater part of the Port Morgan population — used the ferry whenever they wished to visit Jamestown; it cost a little more than walking but it was far less tiring.
On the trip back to base Snow Queen passed a cruise liner coming in. Passengers lining the rails waved a greeting; Fletcher and Joby waved back.
“More visitors for the Island Paradise,” Fletcher said. It was the term they used in the travel brochures.
Joby grunted. “Paradise for some. Hell for others.”
“Well, at least you’re making out none too badly.”
“That’s true,” Joby said. “But I know lots that don’t do so good.”
“And you think things could be better?”
“I know they could. There’s a bag of money not bein’ used the way it ought to be. There’s a pack of people in high places linin’ their pockets and sayin’ to hell with the poor guys.”
“And Clayton Rodgers is one of them?”
“Clayton Rodgers is the chief one. He’s sittin’ on top of the whole rotten system. This here island’s just a playground for the rich and idle that come here to have a good time. The way things are goin’, we’ll soon be nothin’ but a gang of waiters an’ pimps an’ beggars — mostly beggars.”
“Now hold on, Joby. That’s putting it a bit strong.”
“Not too strong, it ain’t.”
“I’ve never heard you sounding off like this before.”
“Mebbe ’cause I don’ often let go. Mos’ times I keep it bottled up. Sometimes you gotta take the cork out.”
“And in your book I suppose I rate as one of the rich and idle?”
Joby gave a sudden grin, as though the dark mood had been thrust aside. “I never said that. I wouldn’t call you a real rich guy; you’d be livin’ it up in one of them fancy hotels if you was. Mebbe a bit idle sure enough, but you’ll get over that, I guess.”
“When the money’s gone?”
“Yeah, when the money’s gone. What you plannin’ to do then?”
“There’s the book.”
“You ain’t never started on no book yet. You think you’ll ever make a livin’ that way? Honest now, do you?”
“No,” Fletcher said; “to be perfectly honest, I don’t. But it’s a nice dream.”
“Nobody ever got rich dreamin’,” Joby said. “Not as I recall.”
The boat chugged on across the bay. Behind them was Jamestown, and beyond Jamestown the hills were green with vegetation. It was a fertile island set in a warm blue sea; it should have been, as the advertisements described it, a paradise; but, as Joby had said, it was a paradise only for some — for the tourists who came with money in their pockets and for the lucky few who grabbed that money. For those who lived in the shanty towns in homes made from old packing-cases, flattened-out oil-drums, rusty corrugated iron and tarred paper, with only the most primitive of sanitation and drainage, and perhaps a long walk to fetch water from a stand-pipe, there was little enough hint of paradise.
“Some day somebody’s gotta do somethin’,” Joby said. “Some day.”
They came up to the Port Morgan jetty, which seemed to be in some need of repair; a lot of the timbers were rotting and the whole structure was leaning slightly to one side, as though it had been given a strong push from which it had never recovered. Away on the left were the crumbling buildings of the old dockyard, weeds growing through the broken concrete and the tendrils of creepers winding themselves round the cracked pillars and rusting iron. On the right was the wide sweep of the headland, the silvery white sand and the fringe of palm-trees, all bending in one direction like spectators at a football match trying to get a sight of the ball.
There were some kids on the jetty; it was a favourite place for kids: you could watch the ships come in; you could fish; you could make chalk marks on the boards and play intricate children’s games. They were not really supposed to be there, but if they were driven away they came back; in the end nobody bothered to drive them away any more.