“Lieutenants Boyle and Kazimierz reporting, sir,” I said, as soon as he deigned to look up. He had a sparse head of hair, a thin face, and an expanding waist.
“Are you those army officers investigating some murder on Tulagi? I was told to expect you and provide what assistance I can. Which isn’t much.”
“Yes, sir.” I answered.
“Murders,” Kaz said, perhaps surprised at my politeness to a chairbound superior officer. “There have been three.”
“I hope you don’t suspect any of my men,” Garfield said, tossing down a pencil as if it were a knife. “I can’t afford to lose any crewmen.”
“Or officers, I assume,” Kaz said. I enjoyed watching this.
“Well, certainly, if an officer of mine is guilty of any infraction, he should be dealt with,” Garfield said. “I’m a busy man, Boyle, so please excuse me.”
“We need some transport, Commander,” I said, before Kaz could make a remark about murder being a bit more than an infraction. “To the main island, and then a jeep.”
“Very well,” he said, calling out to a clerk to arrange a launch to take us to Rendova, and to have a jeep waiting at the harbor. I think he was glad to see us off his little island.
“One more thing,” I said. “Can you tell us if two Coastwatchers have been brought over to Choiseul yet? Porter and Kari.”
“Yes, they went in last night. Landed safely.”
“I assume you’re in contact with them,” I said. “Do you know where they are on the island?”
“You assume incorrectly, Lieutenant,” Garfield said. “Coastwatchers are in radio contact with their headquarters on Guadalcanal. We get orders from there if our assistance is needed. Now you must excuse me.”
“If you get any orders to send a boat in with supplies or anything like that, please let me know, sir.”
“Is one of them a suspect?” Garfield said, showing the first genuine interest in anything I’d said. Everyone loves a mystery.
“We have to ask some questions,” I said. “I’d like to get to them before the Japs do.”
“Good luck with that. Now get out, I’ve got operations to plan.”
I looked at the chart on the table. Red lines stretched out from Lumbari north into the narrow strait off New Georgia. Blue lines arced in from above Bougainville, the likely route for destroyers of the Tokyo Express. A neat little war game with colored pencils in a safe, cool underground bunker. Garfield noticed I was staring at his handiwork, and it was as if he’d read my mind.
“That launch won’t wait all morning, Boyle,” he said, waving his hand as if to swat me away.
“Jack Kennedy sends his regards,” I said, turning to leave.
“It sounds like he’s calmed down then,” Garfield said.
“I doubt it. I was kidding, by the way.”
The heat slammed us as we left the bunker, but it was better than the chill inside.
“Infraction,” Kaz said, spitting out the word.
The launch deposited us at a dock across the bay, on the main island. There were a few older civilian boats, rust-streaked and rotting, tied up next to us. Tin-roofed huts were arranged along the beach, where sailors, stripped to the waist, labored over engines and machine parts. The unglamorous but necessary work of combat-zone repair.
A jeep was provided as promised by Garfield. Our main problem was that no one knew where Coburn’s plantation was, so we headed out on the only road available, trusting our luck.
“It’s an island,” I said to Kaz. “How hard can it be?”
We drove past a field hospital, the giant tents marked with red crosses standing alone in a clearing, a good distance from other military installations. Then along Rendova’s east shore, passing a barbed-wire enclosure patrolled by GIs with bayonets fixed to their M1s.
“Japanese POWs,” Kaz said. Groups of sullen prisoners squatted in small groups inside the wire. Maybe a hundred or so.
“I didn’t think that many would have given up,” I said. “They must be from the fighting on New Georgia. That doesn’t look like a permanent camp.” There were a few huts and Quonset huts outside the wire. Inside, tents with their side flaps rolled up provided shade for the POWs. Most were shoeless, dressed in tattered, rotting uniforms. They were all painfully thin.
“They look much more frightening when they are trying to kill you,” Kaz said as we left the barbed wire behind.
“You take weapons and gear away from soldiers who’ve been fighting for weeks straight, and all you’re left with is dirt and ragged, stinking clothes. It’s as if belts, helmets, straps, and packs were the only things holding them together.”
“In North Africa, German and Italian POWs ranged from sullen to deliriously happy,” Kaz said. “Those men looked neither. They appeared lost.”
We reached a fork in the road. “Speaking of lost,” I said, “which way?”
“Inland,” Kaz said. “A coffee plantation would be at a higher elevation, not sea level.”
As always, Kaz was right. I’d given up asking him how he knew so much. He’d shrug, as if to say, how is it you don’t know these things?
The dirt track took us higher, looping around hills until the sea was far below us and the gently sloping ground was cleared of thick jungle and planted with rows and rows of shoulder-high bushes. Workers moved through the rows, wielding hoes and attacking the weeds that threatened to overwhelm the coffee plants. We drove to the top of the hill, where a house with the usual wide verandah stood, flanked by a large shed with a corrugated roof and another long, narrow building on stilts, roofed native-style with palm fronds.
“This is much better than Lumbari,” Kaz said, stretching as we got out of the jeep. A mild breeze swept up from the sea, slightly scented with salt, cool and crisp after the stale, thick air of the base.
“Are you gents lost?” The voice held the trace of a Scottish accent, softened by years in the Solomons.
“Not if you’re Josh Coburn,” I said to the tall figure who’d stepped out of the shed. He had a full white beard, wore a wide-brimmed hat, and walked with one stiff leg. He came closer, eyeing us suspiciously.
“Who might be asking, then?”
I did the introductions. “We don’t mean to bother you, but we’re investigating a murder. Three of them, actually. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Why? I haven’t killed anyone. Which is a claim few can make these days.”
“You are Josh Coburn, I take it?” Kaz asked.
“I am guilty of that,” Coburn said. “Now, how’d you like to taste some real coffee? If you’re going to talk at me, I might as well take a break.”
“We’d be fools to turn down a cup of java from a coffee plantation, Mr. Coburn,” I said. A few minutes later, we were seated on the verandah, sipping the best coffee I’d ever tasted, marveling at the view. The wind caressed the green jungle beneath the ordered rows of coffee plants, the sparkling sea beyond deceptively peaceful.
“This is extraordinarily delicious,” Kaz said. I nodded an eager agreement.
“It’s the peaberry that does it,” Coburn said. Noting our quizzical looks, he launched into an explanation. “I’m sure you’ve noticed the shape of coffee beans. The cherry-the fruit of the coffee plant-holds two seeds, which is the bean itself. They grow together, which flattens the sides that face each other. But a very few plants will produce a cherry with single seeds. Then you get a nice oval bean, perfect for roasting. You’ll never get it as fresh as this.”
“Remarkable,” Kaz said.
“Fine stuff, isn’t it?” Coburn said. “Commands a good price, too. I roast some beans for myself; the rest get bagged up and sold. Or will be, when the commercial traffic starts back up.”