Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (8 page)

“I understand you were a friend of Mr. DeVane’s,” Skingle said.

“That’s right. We used to play ball together.”

“And you came here on vacation?”

I shook my head.

“No, I came to help Monk out.”

“Doing what?”

“I was still waiting to find that out,” I said.

“But did it involve his work with Darcy Whitehall?”

“Yes,” I said. “It did.”

Skingle shot a quick look at the guy leaning in the corner.

“Some sort of security work, right?” Skingle said.

“That’s right,” I said. “Did you know Monk?”

“No, no, not at all,” said Skingle. “But I was aware that Mr. Whitehall had recently hired him, on a consultant basis.”

Eustace Dunwood cleared his throat.

He said, “If you don’t mind, I was in the midst of interrogating Mr. Chasteen when you arrived.”

I looked at him. Interrogating?

“Carry on, then,” Skingle said.

He made a steeple of his hands and placed them under his chin. He reminded me of every frat boy I’d ever known in college. I didn’t feel like talking to him. Or Dunwood. Matter of fact, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Or being interrogated.

I stood.

“Sorry,” I said. “But I’m not up for this right now. I need to make some phone calls, let a few people know what’s going on.”

“Now listen here,” said Dunwood. “There are still a number of matters we need to discuss.”

“Like what? Who I took a leak with at the airport? Go interrogate someone else about that.”

Dunwood started to say something, but Skingle stopped him.

“Please, Inspector, you must understand that Mr. Chasteen is under a great deal of strain at this time. I’m sure he will be more than happy to make himself available to you when he has had a chance to collect himself, won’t you, Mr. Chasteen?”

“Whatever,” I said.

Skingle stood from his chair, brushed off the seat of his khakis, and shot the sleeves of his jacket.

“Mr. Chasteen,” he said, “in situations of this nature, the embassy is charged with seeing to it that next of kin is notified. May I assume you will take care of that?”

I nodded.

“Also, regarding the proper disposition of Mr. DeVane’s remains, there will be some necessary paperwork, which the embassy will assist you with. We will be in touch with you at the appropriate time.”

“Fine,” I said.

Skingle turned to Dunwood.

“As for you, Inspector, I would be remiss not to mention that the U.S. Embassy will be closely monitoring the handling of this affair.”

Dunwood said nothing.

“And I would be further remiss not to mention that you can expect the embassy to lodge a formal complaint with the prime minister’s office regarding the Jamaica Constabulary Force’s lack of initiative in controlling certain groups that present a clear and present danger to the well-being of U.S. citizens in your country,” said Skingle. “I refer specifically to the NPU.”

“No reason to believe the NPU had anything to do with this,” said Dunwood.

“No reason to believe they didn’t either,” said Skingle.

Skingle gave the guy in the corner a look, and the two of them walked out the door. Dunwood turned to me.

“Where will I be able to find you, Mr. Chasteen?”

“Suppose I’ll head to Libido and check in with Darcy Whitehall.”

“Taxis are out front,” he said.

I started for the door.

“One more thing, Mr. Chasteen,” Dunwood said. “Don’t be telling that embassy man anything you don’t tell me. We clear on that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Real clear.”

The A1 hugged the coast, shooting straight through flat countryside. To our left, the sea lay hidden behind the walled compounds of private estates and big resorts. To our right, the terrain began its ascent toward the mountains.

I’d visited Jamaica several times over the years, but had lingered mostly along the coast. I had very little firsthand knowledge of the island’s wild interior. Not many people do, including the majority of Jamaicans. But I knew there were vast stretches of the hinterland, from the Cockpit Country to the John Crow Mountains, which remain virtually uncharted, as hostile and impenetrable as they were hundreds of years ago when Jamaica was a colonial outpost in the conquest of the Caribbean.

I couldn’t see the mountains from the car. Yet, I had a real sense of their presence, a feeling that something dark and threatening loomed out there.

Then again, maybe it was just my own dark mood. An old friend was dead. And I was alone, heading into uncharted territory of my own. I kept shifting around in the backseat of the Mercedes, but no matter how I fidgeted I couldn’t make myself comfortable.

After an hour or so we neared the bluffs around Repulse Bay. The road steepened. A canopy of Jamaican cedars hid the
night sky. The afternoon showers were long gone, but water still dripped from the trees.

We rounded a bend and the high beams of the Mercedes lit up a concrete wall on our left. It was tall, eight feet at least. It was painted pink and ran as far ahead as I could see. The grounds along the wall were landscaped with stately Royal palms and clusters of bougainvillea. The grass was thick and manicured.

Spotlights drew attention to big letters that were inset on the wall. They spelled out “Libido.”

The spotlights also drew attention to something else. When she saw it, Ali shot up in her seat.

“Damn them!” she said. “They’re at it again.”

Alongside the Libido logo, black spray-painted letters announced: “NPU say go!”

Otee slowed the Mercedes. As the car edged along the wall, we saw a succession of graffiti, all written by the same hand. Sometimes it was just the three letters “NPU.” Elsewhere there were slogans: “NPU say no to Babylon!” and “NPU say stop da exploitation!”

Then the high beams picked up three figures along a section of the wall that lay ahead. Two of them turned toward us, frozen in the headlights. The other one crouched beside the wall, working furiously with a can of spray paint.

“Stop them!” shouted Ali.

Otee whipped the Mercedes off the road, driving along the shoulder. We hit bumps and hollows in the grass, and Otee kept tapping the brakes. We couldn’t go very fast. I bounced around in the backseat.

As we closed in, the crouching figure slung the spray-paint can aside and stood by his accomplices. Three boys, barely in their teens—one of them, the spray painter, barechested and wearing red running shorts; the others in baggy pants and T-shirts. All three of them wore yellow-and-red bandannas pulled tight against their heads.

We were about fifty yards away when the shirtless one reached down, picked up a rock, and flung it at the Mercedes. It struck dead center in the windshield and sent out a spiderweb of
shattered glass. Otee hit the brakes, and I heard Ali scream as I tumbled onto the floorboard, the car spinning in the wet grass, crashing into something, and slamming to a stop.

I pulled myself up and saw Otee leap out his door, saw him pull a pistol from his waistband, saw him lean across the hood of the Mercedes, using it to steady his aim. But the three boys had already bolted across the road and disappeared into the underbrush.

I got out of the car. The Mercedes had crashed into one of the palm trees. The front door on the passenger’s side was crumpled. I helped Ali slide out on the driver’s side.

We joined Otee by the wall. And we looked at the words that had been written there, the paint still fresh and gleaming.

“NPU say go!”

They call themselves Nanny’s People United—NPU. Officially, a political party. But just hoodlums, as far as I’m concerned, committing crimes and calling it politics.”

We sat in the living room of Darcy Whitehall’s cliffside house at Libido, just Darcy Whitehall and me. Otee had deposited me there, then left to escort Ali to her cottage elsewhere on Libido’s sprawling grounds.

It was one swell house—soaring ceilings, bamboo floors, exotic hardwood furniture, everything opening onto a broad deck that wrapped around the place. Airy and expansive, the house seemed to draw in the outdoors and create the impression it was floating above the sea. It was like something the Swiss Family Robinson might have built if they had good taste and a decent design budget.

The wall opposite me was filled with badges of honor from Whitehall’s storied career in the recording industry—framed albums that had gone platinum, photos with all sorts of famous musicians, a row of trophies that included several Grammies.

“Nanny’s People?” I said. “Sounds like it ought to be the name for a day-care center, not a political party.”

“Oh, this Jamaican Nanny, she was about as tough as they come. You never heard her story?”

I shook my head no.

“Granny Nanny, they sometimes call her,” Whitehall said. “Jamaica has seven national heroes. She’s one of them.”

“Like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.”

“No, actually, not like them at all,” said Whitehall. “There’s really no one in America like our Nanny.”

Whitehall wore a faded blue polo shirt and cream-colored pants that could have been pajamas, baggy and made out of cotton with a drawstring waist. He was barefoot. Mr. Casual Elegance.

He reached into a pocket and came out with a roll of cash. He peeled off a bill and handed it to me. It was for five hundred Jamaican dollars, about eight bucks U.S. given the current exchange rate. The face on the bill was of a gaunt, fierce-looking woman, wearing a turban and a necklace of bones and leaves.

“That’s Nanny. Someone says, ‘Hey, mon, lemme hold a Nanny,’ means they want you to give them five hundred J’s.”

I handed Whitehall the bill. He tucked it away.

“Nanny was a leader of the Maroons,” Whitehall said. “You know about them, I assume.”

“That’s what they called the runaway slaves who lived up in the mountains and fought the British. Back in the 1700s.”

Whitehall nodded.

“Didn’t just fight the British, they beat the British, with Nanny leading them all the way. Descendants of those original Maroons still live up there. Got Maroon villages scattered all over Cockpit Country. They have their own autonomous government, their own leaders, their own way of life. Might as well be a separate country up there.”

“And these Nanny’s People, the NPU, they’re based in the mountains, too?”

“Oh, they’re everywhere. In the city, in the mountains. They’ve spread like a brushfire. Got some woman they call Nanny Two, stirring them up and making them do what they do.”

“So what’s their beef with you?”

Whitehall arched an eyebrow, gave me an ironic smile.

“Why, I am the Great Oppressor, of course.”

“Because you own big resorts?”

“Exactly. According to the NPU, tourism equals slavery. Rich white people come here, and poor black people wait on them. No different than the plantations. What they neglect to see, of course, is that without the money tourism brings here, there would be no roads, there would be no airports . . .”

A voice interrupted him.

“No AIDS, no pollution, no homogenization of the culture.”

I turned to see Alan Whitehall standing at the entrance to the living room. Otee stood just behind him.

“What, the NPU has brainwashed you, too?” said Whitehall. “Or are you spouting their nonsense just to win a few more votes in the countryside?”

He said it with a smile, and Alan Whitehall returned it as he joined us in the living room. He embraced his father warmly.

“I might stand miles apart from the NPU on most matters,” said Alan, “but there are some things on which we share a common ground. And the negative impact of wholesale nonsustainable tourism is one of them.”

“I don’t know what this talk is about nonsustainable tourism. All I know is that the people who come and stay in our hotels make it possible to pay the bills,” said Whitehall. “What would you do, man, bite the hand that feeds you?”

“Oh no, Father, I would never bite it. But take a friendly little nip from time to time? Just to keep you honest? Sure, I’ll do that.”

Whitehall jostled his son’s shoulder in mock anger. There was clearly a lot of affection between the two of them whatever their political differences might be. Alan shook my hand.

“My condolences for the loss of your friend,” he said. “I did not know Mr. DeVane well, but no one deserves to die in such a fashion. Such a horrible thing.”

Alan Whitehall bore only the slightest resemblance to his father. Like Ali, his features were dark, the Creole blend so common in the islands. Where Darcy Whitehall was dashing and devil-may-care, Alan was bookish and buttoned-down.

Darcy Whitehall gestured us to the bar. He made drinks. The two of them had gin and tonics. I saw a bottle of Appleton Estate Reserve twenty-one-year-old rum. Costs sixty bucks a bottle in the States. When you can find it. I had some that.

We stepped out onto the broad deck that wrapped around the house. Otee stationed himself between the living room and the deck, his pistol snug in the waistband of his pants.

Far below us, waves crashed against cliffs that fell away to a perfect crescent of white-sand beach. Lit up at night, Libido’s layout resembled a wagon wheel cut in half. Pathways radiated out to clusters of villas. The hub was a long low complex near the beachfront with a couple of restaurants, a nightclub, a spa, and a fitness center.

“I know you must have many questions, Mr. Chasteen,” Darcy Whitehall said.

“Just one,” I said. “Who killed Monk DeVane?”

Whitehall shook his head. It was a long moment before he finally said: “I’ve no idea.”

I’m no good at masking what I’m thinking. Whitehall said: “You look surprised by that.”

“That’s because I am,” I said. “I just assumed you might have some suspicions about who’s responsible for all this. Someone you’ve crossed, someone you’ve done business with, someone who has it out for you. Back at the skybox, in the elevator, when you said you knew the bastards were bluffing . . .”

Whitehall cut me off with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“Just a figure of speech,” said Whitehall. “I wasn’t referring to anyone in particular.”