Gaston waited until the two of them were alone in his infirmary room down the hall, before he put a finger alongside his nose and said, “The Irish girl is in on it.”
“Mab? How do you figure that, Gaston?”
“Cherchez la femme, my old and rare friend. She picked you up aboard the ship before we got here. Who is to say she did not slip that snake in our cabin before she encountered you on deck, discovered you were not in your bunk where you were supposed to be and—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, she didn’t try to kill me in her cabin.”
Gaston made a lewd gesture and insisted, “How do you know she didn’t intend to slit your throat in your sleep, hein?”
“We weren’t sleeping. We were ... never mind. Anyway, when you were bitten by that bushmaster she saved your ass. Have you forgotten that?”
“Mais non. She might have wanted to build character with the man they sent her to get. I will admit all this just came to me while you were bringing me up to date. I don’t intend to stay here tonight in her power.”
Captain Gringo said, “That’s stupid. She’d have given you the wrong antivenom if she wanted to harm a hair on your lopsided head. What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
Gaston frowned up at his younger friend and said flatly, “Embalming fluid. Merde alors, you are the one who needs to have his head examined, Dick! I am willing to believe you chopped a man’s head off as he was trying to kill you. I am willing to believe a well-embalmed corpse might last a month or so in this heat. I am not about to believe both stories, and since I know you don’t lie very often—”
“Back up. Are you suggesting Mab made funny-funny with her test tubes?”
Gaston looked disgusted and replied, “Suggesting? J’accuse! I agree she is nice-looking. I agree she is a nurse. But her trick was childishly simple. She just drew some blood from a freshly killed corpse, got rid of it, and voila!”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Credit me with common sense. That’s one of the first things I thought of. So I took the hypo and drew my own sample from the guy on the table. Then I ran my own test. He was still embalmed. The blood’s been replaced by a tropic mixture, strong as hell. It’s got arsenic and camphor in it, and the book says a stiff can last a couple of months or longer before it starts to go bad.”
“The book, Dick?”
“The chemistry book from the doctor’s desk. Do I look like an undertaker? I had to read how to test for all the goodies Mab insisted were in the son of a bitch. I followed directions and got the same results.”
Gaston frowned and asked, “Do you believe everything you read?”
“Oh sure, Doctor Lloyd had a special private printing of a textbook, knowing he was going to die and that a couple of suckers were coming along to read his private library. That’s pretty wild, Gaston.”
“So is an embalmed corpse coming at one with a machete. Given a weird plot by a mad doctor or something, that is simply not possible. One must go with one’s possible fantasy, hein?” Gaston thought before he added, “I like that better than Mab being in on it. How do we know Doctor Lloyd is really dead? Have any of us seen his corpse?”
“Oh shit, we wouldn’t recognize him if we met him alive. The whole damned colony says he’s dead. That’s how we know he’s dead. Are you suggesting everyone we’ve met so far is in on some crazy plot?”
“Well, at least that is possible. Once she calmed down, did Mab finish the autopsy?”
“No, I did. I only had one question. I cut open the chest and found five bullets, right where they were supposed to be. One smack in the heart and the others close enough to stop it through hydrostatic shock. That idiotic Webster kept telling me about some lion he’d seen charging on after being shot through the heart. It got pretty tedious.”
Gaston pursed his lips and mused, “I have seen men stay on their feet for an astonishing length of time after being fatally shot, Dick. A man too excited to give a damn can last up to four minutes with a stopped heart, and four minutes is a long time in a fight.”
Captain Gringo nodded as he relived those awful moments in the jungle. He said, “I’ve considered that. I figured that had to be the answer. I expected Mab to tell me he’d been hopped up. She really threw me when she said he was dead before I ever met him.”
Gaston shrugged and said, “Very well, if we accept that, what does it mean, Dick?”
“That modern science is full of shit and we’re in big trouble, or that Mab and I were tricked.”
“I like that better. How do you think it was done?”
“If I knew that we wouldn’t be tricked, damn it! The stiff was only out of my sight for a few minutes, and Burton and his guys got to it before anybody could have possibly drained it and embalmed it.”
“How do you know they didn’t do it?”
Captain Gringo stopped and thought before he shook his head and said, “No. Even if Burton was some sort of maniac there wasn’t time. I asked Mab how long it takes. She’s worked around hospital morgues. She said it takes close to an hour to do it right, and she said they did it right. She pointed out the sewn up incisions where they’d drained and flushed his veins. The hell of it was, even I could see it had to be a while ago. The real blood on the stitching was dry and hard as plaster. I’m no doctor, but I believe her when she says that guy has been dead a while. How long is hard to say, but over two hours means I somehow tangled with a corpse. I don’t think I’ll get much sleep tonight.”
Gaston sighed and said, “Lucky girl, whoever she turns out to be. Have you checked out the local talent?”
“No, the siesta is just about over and I’m invited to tea at the governor’s. So I guess I’ll get to meet everyone important. I’d take you along, but Mab says you need more rest. It looks like you’ll have the novelty of sleeping alone again tonight.”
Gaston chuckled and said, “Speak for yourself, Dick. I know your plans for the head nurse here. But now that I have had time to reconsider my suspicions there is one a bit darker with a tres formidable derriere and—”
“Jesus Christ, Gaston. You’re asking for a heart attack.”
“I don’t think so. She looks like she can take it. If she starts to expire I just have to pull this bell cord here, to get medical assistance for her.”
Captain Gringo laughed and said, “You’ll be gentle with her, I’m sure. Who is it, that American girl, Willie May?”
“Mais non. Even I can do better than that. If you wish, I can ring for her. Perhaps she has a friend.”
“If she has, and if I know you, you won’t need me. But for Chrissake, take it easy, Gaston. Mab says you could have a relapse.’’
“Bah, she says dead people run through the jungle waving machetes, too. I shall go with my own medical theories, and if you return to find me dead, it shall be with a beautiful smile on my face, hein?”
Captain Gringo left, shaking his head fondly. He had to admit Gaston had a point. Mab was only a nurse and he knew even less about medicine. Either of them might have missed something a doctor wouldn’t have. It was sort of convenient to have the only doctor on the island dead when stiffs got up to walk around.
He’d stolen a book from the late Doctor Lloyd since there’d been no way to ask him for it, and he hadn’t wanted to rattle Mab any further. He patted his hip pocket. The small, spooky book was still there. It was an English translation from the original French, published years ago in Haiti. It was pretty obvious why Lloyd had been reading up on Voodoo. Captain Gringo intended to bone up on the subject, too, as soon as he had the time to read it. Voodoo sounded silly, and zombies even sillier, until they started ganging up on you. He’d never meet Lloyd, and it was odd to grieve for a man he’d never met. But he sure wished he could have had a chat with the medical man before he died, or before somebody murdered him.
He’d wanted to check that out too, while he and Mab rummaged through the dead man’s office. But Mab had said the only way to test the label on Lloyd’s antivenom vials was to let a snake bite you and see if the stuff worked.
He wasn’t that curious.
So it had to stay an educated suspicion. If someone had switched labels before leaving a snake where the doctor could be bitten, it had been neat but simple. He could see a dozen ways they could have done it. But who were they? The natives? That seemed neat and simple too. But there was something wrong here. Something he’d worked out for himself as a kid when he first read about witchcraft.
Witchcraft had to be the bunk. Not just because science said so, but because it made no sense to be the classic witch or witchdoctor.
He got to expound on that idea a bit at tea, once he’d cleaned up and presented himself at the governor’s.
Tea was late that afternoon, thanks to the rain as well as all the excitement. But it was veddy veddy British and Captain Gringo found himself the only man there not wearing a tie and madras jacket.
Tea was served under an awning behind the governor’s tin mansion by colored servants who looked a bit silly as well as uncomfortable in starched white linen uniforms. He already knew most of the men that mattered, and didn’t worry about the other three or four whites introduced as junior executives of Pantropic Limited.
The women had been allowed to dress more sensibly in low-cut taffeta or prints. Governor Gage’s wife looked something like a horse when she smiled. But the honey-blonde across from him was a knockout. He was surprised and disappointed to learn she was Captain Burton’s wife, Alice. The fat old colonel and the horsey old dame were her parents. So, Burton, the son of a bitch, was their son-in-law, as well as the guy who got to sleep with Alice tonight.
It hardly seemed fair. Burton was maybe a little smarter than silly Webster and Captain Gringo supposed he was all right, but Alice had a body that set her cameo face off like she’d been designed by Louis Tiffany, for finer tastes than her flabby husband seemed to have. He tried not to picture her in Burton’s embrace. But while he could get her husband out of his picture of her going to bed, it still left her there, and it was giving him a most uncomfortable erection.
Despite not showing up with a tie, Captain Gringo had better manners than to bring up forensic medicine over tea and crumpets. But Burton, the only other American at the table, embarrassed him by asking if he’d figured out how the Voodoo Queen the natives talked about had sent that dead man at him.
Captain Gringo said, “Voodoo and witchcraft is self-contradictory, Captain Burton. But since you brought it up, has anything been done about poor Montalban and the others?”
Burton said, “Oh sure, I sent a burial detail out just before we came over to join the folks.”
Mrs. Gage looked like she was about to throw up, but she went on pouring tea. The poor thing probably didn’t know what else to do.
Her daughter, Alice, shot her husband a warning look and probably to change the subject to less grisly matters, asked, “Why do you say witchcraft is self-contradictory, Captain Walker?”
He smiled across at her, an easy task, and said, “Simple. If you were a witch, I mean a real witch with real powers, would you live in a shack in some swamp, muttering to your bats and toads? Or would you prefer Buckingham Palace?”
Her mother looked up from her pouring to say, “Perhaps witches are eccentric, dear boy. I mean, they’re said to be old crones who cackle a bit overmuch.”
Webster chimed in, “Quite so, boil and bubble and all that rot. A person would have to be rather senile to begin with, what?”
But Alice smiled and said, “I think I see what you’re getting at, Captain Walker. A person who had magic powers, real magic powers, wouldn’t have to be old and ugly. If I had magic powers the first thing I’d do would be to take off twenty pounds and give myself lavender eyes.”
Captain Gringo said, “I don’t think you have much room for improvement, ma’am. But that’s the general idea. Who’d live the way witches or witchdoctors live if they didn’t have to?”
Webster nudged Burton and said, “I say, spot of gallantry and all that, what?”
But Burton was probably used to the idea that other men found his ravishing wife attractive. He ignored Webster and said, “I can see your objections to civilized witches and warlocks, but what about the native kind? I mean, a jungle bunny might stumble over a few spells and incantations and not know enough to improve himself.”
Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “Nobody’s too dumb to want simple luxuries. Maybe a native witchdoctor wouldn’t want to move to London or Paris, but at the least he or she would have a decent hut and all the food they could eat for themselves and their friends. We had these Apache Devil Dancers back home when I was with the Tenth Cav. They were pretty good at ventriloquism and sleight of hand. They gave us a. lot of trouble and nobody ever figured out how some of their tricks worked. But they started losing their hold over the Apache when some smart young Christian Indians asked how come they could evoke a hundred and one Apache gods but couldn’t produce a bushel of corn or enough tobacco to go around.”
There was a polite chuckle around the tea table and Alice Burton said, “I quite agree. If this mysterious Mamma Macumba they talk about had real magic powers, she wouldn’t muck about with raids and arson. She’d simply produce a few million pounds and buy all the land she wanted!”
Captain Gringo asked, “Is Nuevo Verdugo up for sale?”
Colonel Gage said, “Good Lord, of course! Pan-tropic Limited would sell it gladly for enough to cover its losses to date. I mean, we’re in business to make money, eh what?”
Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I can see making a profit here might be harder than you folks planned. But if you’re aiming to sell out, I don’t see what all the excitement is about.”
Gage replied, “I said we’d gladly sell off these holdings for the chance to break even. I didn’t say anyone has made us an offer! Who’s about to buy a perishing tract of semi-jungle infested with hostile natives, with or without this Voodoo business thrown in?”
Webster said, “News of these zombie chaps has reached the marketplace. It’s a bit like trying to offer a house with rats in the walls. We can’t sell before we’ve disinfected the premises. But, of course, if we could get the rats out of the walls, we wouldn’t want to sell out.”
Mrs. Gage had a biscuit halfway to her mouth. She grimaced and put it back on her plate as she murmured to her husband, “Must we, at tea?”
Gage said, “Quite right, old girl. We were talking business, Webster. I was about to ask Captain Walker here, if he was satisfied working for Woodbine Arms Limited. I shan’t ask what Sir Basil is paying this season, but if I know him, it can’t be as much as we’re in a position to offer. How do you feel about joining us, Walker?”
Captain Gringo glanced at Burton. The other American at the table nodded and said, “It’s okay. You wouldn’t be breaking my rice bowl. I’m really an engineer. I wound up commanding the guard because of a misspent youth at a military school. I’m not really cut out to run a jungle war.”
Captain Gringo tended to agree, but he was too polite to say so. He turned back to Gage and said, “I’m flattered, Colonel. But you sure make snap judgments. We haven’t been on the island a full day.”
Gage said, “Nonsense. Sir Basil cabled your qualifications before you and Verrier got here.”
Gage turned to the others and explained, “They call him Captain Gringo in Mexico. Seems he and his friend took on the whole Diaz dictatorship one time and almost won. He tamed a tribe of wild Indians in Panama, too. Need one say more?”
Alice Burton dimpled at Captain Gringo and said, “How thrilling. You must be very brave, Captain.”
He read the smoke signals in her eyes and answered, “I’ve learned to be a little cautious about charging into disputed territory, ma’am.”
What was the matter with the silly dame? Her fucking husband was sitting right there! He’d heard the British colonial set liked to screw around, but Burton was a Yank.
To change the subject and give himself time to think, he turned back to Gage and said, “I’d have to talk it over with my associate, Gaston, sir. Frankly, I don’t know whether you need a professional exterminator or not. Has anybody tried talking to the natives?”
Burton said, “You just met up with them this afternoon, Walker. How conversational did you find the one who killed Montalban?”
“He was sort of unfriendly, come to think of it. But I was thinking about a powwow with the tribal leaders. Even Apache seem willing to chat once in a while if they think you’re making them an offer.”
Gage said, “Black Caribs aren’t Apache. Not even the Christian natives on this island have ever managed a word with them. We’re not utter savages, you know. When we first took over here, we left gifts for them at the tree line. We’ve tried repeatedly to contact them for a discussion of our differences. A local priest even offered to walk into the jungle alone with a cross in one hand and a white flag in the other.”
“What happened?”
“He never came back.”
Captain Gringo frowned and said, “Hmm, I would have assumed that they’d at least made the usual demands and speeches about the spirits giving them these lands as long as the grass shall grow and so forth. Do you mean it’s a pure no quarters race war, shoot on sight?”
Burton said, “Exactly, and as you just found out, the so-and-sos are hard to shoot. The one you got was the first time we’ve even managed to verify a kill.”
He glanced at his mother-in-law and chose his words as he added, “Let’s not go into just when he died. The point is that you got him, and we’ve yet to see you in action with your machine guns. Gordo told me you’d said something about our setting them up wrong. I’m perfectly willing to step aside and let you take over.”
Captain Gringo said, “We’ll talk about it later then.”
Alice Burton said, “Oh, why don’t you sup with us this evening, Captain? We’ll be dining at eight and you boys can discuss military strategy in private as long as you like.”
Burton for the first time looked a little uncomfortable. Captain Gringo wondered how often his wife had put him through this, and what he did about it. Being married to the boss’s daughter beat getting one’s own job, but on the other hand, you couldn’t beat your wife, so it evened out.
Captain Gringo said he might drop by but that he wanted to look around some more and see how his friend, Gaston, was. That gave him a good reason to excuse himself from the tea party, so he did.
Webster tagged along as he left the governor’s garden to head into the native quarter. The town was wrapped around the big central green like a squared-off horseshoe, open to the waterfront. The company buildings fronted on the green with other streets onion-peeling in an ever growing horseshoe until they ended in less formal clusters of housing, cleared lots, and gumbo limbo thickets. The Anglo-American and executive Hispanic housing lay to the upwind side of town, with the sugar mill, engine, and machine shops contesting with native shacks for the space downwind.
That was where he was heading. Webster, at his side, said, “I thought we were on our way to see your chum at the infirmary.”
Captain Gringo said, “I was being polite.”
“Oh quite. Bloody bores, those tea parties, eh what?”
“Yeah. I noticed there was only a handful of people there. I thought there were more Anglo-Americans here than that.”
“Oh, there are. But the colonel’s lady is a bit of a snob, for one thing, and prefers intimate teas for another. You won’t be invited tomorrow. She rotates the honor among her victims. We don’t have to attend her court again until everyone has had some of her dreadful tiffin. Takes her nearly a week to poison us all.”
The taller American did some mental guestimation and said, “So there are a couple of dozen off-islanders here in Utopiaton?”
“About seventeen white men and their womenfolk, not counting you and Verrier. Of course, they have to entertain the local gentry from time to time. Just the leading families and, of course, the Papist priest.”
“They’re colored people?”
“Not exactly. Exotic Spanish types. I’ve never quite figured out what a Dago is. I mean, they’re not really niggers, but, dash it all, they could hardly be called white.”
Captain Gringo didn’t want to go into it with the twit. He said, “There’s usually a plaza and marketplace in the towns down here. I haven’t seen anything like that.”
Webster said, “You’re headed the right way. The Dagoes use the street across the tracks as their Bond Street or Piccadilly. The town was laid out by a leading architectural firm in London, but the damned Dagoes have no idea of form.”
They followed an alley off the green and crossed the tracks Captain Gringo remembered. He saw the puffing billy train and sugar mill to his left and the loading docks framing a patch of sea to his right. They walked through a block of shabby tin houses apparently inhabited mostly by kids and chickens. Then they were on the real main drag of a real town, no matter how they’d laid it out on paper.
People were like that. Utopian planners never seemed to know how real people liked to live. He remembered all the action back in Washington had been off to one side of the sterile mall and marble tombs, too.
The narrow crowded side street was lined with cantinas, farmacias and bodegas. Native peddlers squatted along the few blank walls to make a post siesta sale before the sun went down, which wouldn’t be long now. Captain Gringo spotted a corner cantina and was about to cross over to it as soon as that carriage coming passed by. It was an open coach and four, driven by an elderly Negro in a high silk hat. Two women were in the back, wrapped in black Spanish lace.
Suddenly, as the carriage drew abreast of the two men, a ragged, cotton-clad figure materialized from the other side, waving a machete.
Webster gasped, “I say!” as Captain Gringo moved forward, grabbing for his shoulder holster. The attacking native leaped aboard the carriage on the far side while the women cowered down in their leather cushioning. The man with the machete wasn’t after their money. He obviously wanted their heads. So as he raised the machete to swing, Captain Gringo fired across the women’s knees and jackknifed the assassin off the far running board with a .38 slug where his belly button used to be.
After that it got sort of noisy. One of the women was wailing like a banshee, the confused coachman was cursing as he fought his rearing horses, and people charged in from every direction, yelling fit to bust. He recognized the fat guard, Gordo, in the crowd, and since Gordo was shouting, “Viva Captain Gringo!” he assumed they weren’t mad at him. But they were stomping the man he’d shot pretty good.
Captain Gringo went up and over the coach, saying, “Excuse me, ladies.” On the far side he fired in the air for attention and shouted in Spanish, “Enough! I want to question him! Sergeant Gordo, move these people back!”
Gordo yelled, “You heard Captain Gringo, you idiots! This is our prisoner you are kicking as if you owned him. Back, I say, before we show you real slaughter!”
Abashed, the peones formed a circle around the mess they’d made of the gut-shot man in the roadway. Someone had already stolen his machete. Captain Gringo dropped to one knee and felt the side of his throat. Then he muttered, “Shit.” The man was dead.
Behind him, a soft sultry voice said, “We are in your debt, señor.”
Captain Gringo stood up and turned around, wishing he had a hat to take off. The face he saw framed in old Spanish lace belonged in a portrait frame. She was obviously pure Castilian with aquamarine eyes, ivory skin, and a ringlet of burnished copper hair curled right in the middle of her forehead. Gordo joined him, to doff his cap and murmur, “I kiss your foot with respect, Dama Luisa. May I present Captain Gringo, as he is called?”
The girl had spoken to him in English, so Captain Gringo said, “I’m Dick Walker, and I’m honored, ma’am.”
“My poor duefia is too upset to thank you properly, Mr. Walker. But we are both in your debt, nevertheless. Dear Gordo will direct you to our home when it is convenient for you to call and receive the honors due you.”
He didn’t know how to handle that, so Captain Gringo said, “Por nada, my Dama. Have you any idea why that man just attacked you ladies?”
Dama Luisa glanced rather disdainfully down at the battered corpse in the roadway and” said, “I never saw him before. Have you any idea who he might have been, Gordo?”
Gordo shook his head and said, “No, Dama Luisa. He is not from this part of the island, I am certain.”
Captain Gringo turned and took another look. The shabby man had Hispanic features and mestizo coloring. Dama Luisa said, “He does not look like a Carib, Black or Red. But who else is there on Nuevo Verdugo? Are you certain he is not one of the off-island workers that your company imported, Gordo?”
“It is possible, Dama Luisa. But we shall soon know, in that case. What are your orders on this matter, Captain Gringo?”
“I think you’d better take the body to the infirmary and have Sister O’Shay look at it. She’ll know the tests I have in mind as soon as you tell her where you found him. Then see if you can get each foreman of a work crew to take a look at him. With luck, someone may know him and we can start from there.”
Gordo looked uneasy and said, “Forgive me, my Captain, but though you called me Sergeant I have yet to make Lance Corporal.”
“You’re wrong. Colonel Gage just offered me Commandant of the Guard, and I just made you Sergeant.”
“Por favor, I don’t know how to read or write!”
“I’ve seen you twice in action, Gordo. You’ve got some rough edges, but you do what you’re told, and that’s enough for me. So carry on, Sergeant Gordo. We have to get this street cleared and see these ladies on their way.”
Gordo grinned boyishly and began to bluster the crowd back as Dama Luisa murmured, “You are a kind as well as quick-thinking man, Mr. Walker. I have known Gordo all my life. You have made a devoted friend from common clay indeed.”
He smiled back at her and said, “I do mean to drop by your place sometime, but not because you owe me a sandwich. I need to talk to people who know the island. I don’t think Colonel Gage knows much about common clay. When would it be convenient for you and your husband, ma’am?”
She laughed and said, “That’s usually our ploy. I never realized how obvious it must sound to you men. To answer your question, I’m not married. Gordo would have told you I was a widow in any case, but I admire a man who makes direct moves, as long as he’s not too clumsy.”
The older woman at her side, who’d been taking it all in as she decided ‘whether to faint or not, sat up to nudge Dama Luisa and mutter something. Luisa laughed and said, “Tia Consuela thinks we are flirting. Will you tell her we’re not flirting, Mr. Walker?”
“I never lie to a lady, ma’am.”
This time the duefia laughed, too. Dama Luisa said, “I am otherwise engaged this evening, but we’ll expect you just before La Siesta tomorrow. Until then, you know you have our heartfelt thanks. Drive on, Bruno.”
The Negro cracked his whip and the coach and four moved on. Captain Gringo saw that Gordo had enlisted a couple of boys and a burro to carry the body away. He remembered Webster and noticed for the first time that the twittery Englishman was gone. It didn’t surprise him.
Since everything seemed to be getting back to normal, he walked over to the cantina, went in, and sat down at a blue-washed table. The cantina girl said anything he ordered was on the house, and he got the idea somehow, that this included her. But she had a moustache and was sort of shapeless, so he ordered cerveza.
Captain Burton and a quartet of guards found him there, working on his second beer and chatting with the other customers, when they burst in, looking sort of excited.
Burton asked, “What’s up? Webster came in panting about you getting into a brawl over here in the native quarter.”
Captain Gringo said, “I figured he might. Sit down and have a drink. It’s all over. Some clown tried to hack a couple of women with a machete and I sent the body over to the infirmary. By the way, I just promoted Gordo, if you really don’t mind my taking over.”
Burton said, “God no. We both know I’m lousy at the job.” Then he turned to the guards he’d brought and added, “This is your new C.O. Savvy?”
The four guards presented arms and one of them said, “We await your orders, Captain Gringo!”
“Okay, my first order is that we all cool off with cerveza. Stack arms and sit down while I figure our next move.”