Dark paradise, p.16
Dark Paradise, page 16
As I dozed off, a shadow sailed over my face. Jimbo Brigs. His dread locks swung about as he surveyed in all directions like a gazelle at a watering hole.
“Come,” he pointed a dark hand toward a cluster of sea grape trees. “Ova here.”
I started to pick up the blanket. “Leave dat,” he growled, yellowed teeth like fangs jutting out of his wide mouth. “Just walk ova.”
Following them to the sea grape trees, I yanked on my shirt as we walked. I picked a few purple grapes and popped them into my mouth. They were slightly sour, but good.
“Wha’ you want?” Jimbo asked.
“I want to know what went down in that warehouse,” Dana said.
“Why I should tell you? You why I-and-I in trouble.”
“No, Jimbo. You are in trouble because you kidnapped a girl. The daughter of an important man. We just happened to walk into your life at that exact moment and things got crazy.”
“I should...” his bottom lip quivered.
“Frankie told you my offer,” Dana said.
“Yeah, he tell me,” Jimbo said.
“So, tell me what I want to know.”
“Wha’ he doin’ here?”
“My protection,” she said. “He got me out the last time we tangled.”
“As I recall, you save him from me. She your protection, right da man?”
“Just tell her the news so we can leave you alone,” I said, trying to give him my toughest stare. He didn’t look impressed.
“You t’ink I want wind up dead? Dis man. Dis man you want to know ‘bout. He like t’ings his way. Ain’t much room to hide in dis here island.”
“Oh, I don’t know, you seem to avoid getting your crops caught by the cops and they’re a lot bigger than you are,” Dana said. “Just let them protect you.”
“Who?”
“The cops,” Dana hissed.
“Okay, okay, you agree to forget what I look like at da trial, I tell you. Yeah?”
“Yeah, all right,” I said. “If you can’t give us some real info we can verify, deal’s off.”
“What he said.” Dana added, “I think I’m rubbing off on you.”
Jimbo’s dark eyes searched in the blazing sun for answers. He plucked at a dead leaf, tearing out rounded edges and tossing them aside.
Dropping down in the sand, he muttered, “I want do me own way. You know I been workin’ for Frankie long time. He my family. He help me, but sometime you gotta break away, be your own.” His eyes kept darting around the beach and the overgrown brush on the access road.
Jimbo held his breath as a small, silver pick-up truck approached from the west end of the beach, branches scraping noisily across the spotted paint. A leathery fellow drove by grinning at us. Half his teeth were missing. A large fishing net filled up the bed of the truck.
“I jus’ can’t look around without jump out my skin,” he said. “You can’t mess dez people.”
Jimbo pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket. He lit up, inhaling deeply and tilting his head back as he blew it into the trees.
“Jimbo, who are you talking about?” Dana asked impatiently.
I held up my hand. “Jimbo?” He still looked into the trees. “Jimbo, when you say dez people, who you talk about?” Talking to this man felt like coaxing a feral cat into my lap.
He pointed at my chest. “Lemme talk wid him alone. You take a walk on da beach.”
Dana looked at me, then shrugged and limped toward the water, removing her shoes and hiking up her linen pants as she went.
“I-and-I no like reporters. You no reporter, right?”
“I no reporter,” I said.
My innards groaned loud enough for Jimbo to hear. “You all right, da man?”
Standing up and clenching, I popped one of my pills.
“Wha’ dat is?” he said.
“Pill from the doctor,” I said. “It helps.”
He held his joint toward me. “Dis help,” he said. “Dis real medicine.”
I stared at him a long moment, then took the joint and puffed. Smoking joints was getting to be a habit the last two days, but I hadn’t smoked since college. I coughed.
“Keep it smooth, da man. Watch here.”
He pulled in, then held the smoke before releasing it slowly and steadily. I tried again, imitating him. It worked better and I relaxed. I handed back the joint and leaned against the sea grape tree.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You might need every day,” he said. “Good for colitis.”
“You a doctor?”
“I know medicine of ganga,” he said. “I always tense, now I smoke ganga and no problem. I feel relax.”
Dana watched us out of the corner of her eye. I could feel her impatience over the sound of the waves. A Boston Whaler motored slowly into the bay, heading for an anchoring spot next to a buoy about one-hundred feet off-shore. I took another toke. He smiled at me.
“Feel betta, right?”
“Betta, right,” I said.
“I can’t let Frankie run me no more. Derek and me, we supposed to get out. One large shipment, den Frankie say I free.”
“Free from what?”
“Slavery. My fadda’s slavery.”
“Your father enslaved you?”
“No, bu’ it was ‘cause he,” Jimbo said, his eyes getting more glazed as the weed took effect. “Dis when I see Jah.”
Jah was the Rastafarian word for God. Weed opened their mind to connect with God. A higher consciousness.
He rotated slowly. Sweat poured off his face, glistening in the sun.
“You best go now.”
“I need something.”
“I done give it. I done give it all. I do it to escape from dis here rock. I say I do anyt’ing. Anyt’ing.”
“Did you do it for Jarl? Was it for Cecil Jarl? Did you take the girl for her father?” I begged.
“Yeah, a man from dat property place in Sub Base. Right. Payne and somet’ing. A man dere tell me he get me and Derek to Jamaica in style. Frankie won’t know not’ing. Now, Frankie know. He say I his for good or he let me go rot.”
“How will you rot?”
Dana walked back over, looking at her cell phone as she came. “Can we move this along?”
“We’re not done. Wait over there.”
“Shit’s happening,” she said, holding up the phone.
Jimbo took another toke on his smoke as he sat elbows to knees, head low. I said nothing. After a moment, Dana limped toward the water again.
“I don’t know da man name. I know he from dem real estate place.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yeah. He white. Tall.”
“British accent?”
“Yeah, I t’ink so. English, yeah,” he said.
“What will you do if you get out of this and I can make a deal with Frankie?”
“You? You ain’t making no deal wid Frankie, da man. I done work for Frankie for good now. Dat’s all dere is,” he muttered. His head bobbed as he stared at the sand.
“Was there anyone else?”
“Nah, jus’ me and Derek waiting wid da girl,” he said. “I feel bad about I have to hit she.”
“There wasn’t a doctor?”
“I say I ain’t meet no one else. Yeah, dere was doctor. He coming when you show up.”
“You know his name?”
“I don’ know and never see him.”
“You know what he was going to do?” I asked. “This is important.”
“Nah, somet’ing wid da girl.”
Dana came back over. Jimbo stood after dousing the tip of his joint in the sand. He pulled out a dime bag and dropped the blackened roach in among some loose pieces of weed.
“Now, leave I alone,” he said, ambling off up the beach toward the rocks. His thick shoulders rolled as he walked.
“So, what’d you get?”
Staring after Jimbo, I said, “British white dude from Payne and Wedgefield set up the kidnapping of Celia in exchange for guaranteeing safe passage for Jimbo and Derek to Jamaica without Frankie knowing.”
Then Dana blurted, “What about DeVere?”
I shrugged. “No go. He said a doctor for Celia was on the way out to do something for her, but they never saw him or knew his name.”
WE PASSED THE HOSPITAL, only a few minutes before we’d get back to the paper. I suggested we stop.
“Do you know where the doctors park?” I asked.
“No clue,” said Dana. “We’ve come at DeVere over and over. This is a tired lead. Besides, what do we like DeVere for? If anything, we should head for Payne and Wedgefield and see what we turn up there.”
“I think he was there to get rid of the baby,” I said.
“There’s only one problem with that theory. Jarl’s a staunch Catholic who thinks the Pope walks on water. He’s donated millions to the church and has even had private meetings with the man himself. He’s come out repeatedly saying he’s pro-life in all circumstances, including rape.”
“Humans are full of contradictions,” I retorted. She said nothing, then I added, “I think DeVere’s involved.”
She sighed. “Me too.”
The hospital had very little landscaping. Like most hospitals, the parking lot stretched on and on. After five minutes, we circled around the back of the main building and found parking spots with reserved signs. We got out and searched row by row, reading the signs with each doctor’s name on them.
“It’s here,” I said.
Dana hobbled over and stared at the vacant space. We went inside to ask when DeVere would be on duty.
“He’s on call now. I was about to page him for an emergency. He might not be available to talk for a while as it’s a surgical procedure,” the nurse added.
“Does Dr. DeVere perform abortions?” I asked.
“Dear me, no. We don’t have an abortion clinic here anyway. Dr. DeVere does emergency medicine, mostly surgical procedures for triage. I suppose he might have done one or two to save a woman’s life sometime, but none I’m aware of.” She looked at Dana with a wan smile. “Does your daughter require an abortion? I can recommend a clinic.”
“That’s okay, we’ll come back another time,” Dana said.
We headed back out to watch for DeVere’s arrival. He pulled up a half-hour later in a black, late model Mercedes.
“Do you think it’s the same one?” she asked.
We watched him go inside then went to the car, inspecting it for anything that might jog my memory. The car was clean and appeared to be the same size and type I’d seen that night at the warehouse in Sub Base, but it had no scratches or dents.
“Not sure. There was nothing distinguishing about that car or this one,” I said. As we looked at the doctors’ cars in the lot, there must have been a half-dozen other black Mercedes.
“He remains on our radar then, but the coincidences keep mounting making his involvement harder and harder to ignore,” she said as we returned to the car.
Dana’s leg ached, so I drove her home. I crashed on her couch. As I lay in the darkness watching a square ray of moonlight on the floor, my eyes inched closed. I dreamt of a ship at sea in the night. A thin layer of magenta clouds masked the stars when I looked up. No land in sight.
Chapter 40
I stumbled to the bathroom and stuck my mouth under the faucet, guzzling my pill down. Dousing my greasy hair with water, I attempted in vain to get it under control. It’d been under my straw fedora for so long the roots ached. No hat today.
Dana had no mouthwash, floss or a spare toothbrush. I hated not brushing or flossing. I’d once read in a women’s journal that if you ate an apple in when you woke up, it made morning kissing better because one bite eliminated bad breath. Dana had one in the fridge. Evelyn always hated morning breath.
I gobbled the apple, but felt a dark hollowness like my throat was a bottomless well. Assuming Dana was still in bed, I left without saying good-bye. Back at my room, the cell showed a missed call and shortly thereafter Dana texted: “Turn on Channel 2.”
On my snazzy nineteen-inch television, I watched a press conference, palm trees blowing in the background and the sign for Payne and Wedgefield prominently displayed. The caption said, “Tod Cavenaugh, Vice-President, Payne & Wedgefield.”
Cavenaugh, a tall white man, spoke with an educated British accent.
“Mr. Jarl is elated by the bravery of the men and woman who rescued his dear Celia. The whole family is terribly saddened by the events and will pray that such a thing never happens to other families in St. Thomas. Mr. Jarl plans to donate one million dollars to the S.T.P.D. to create a kidnapping task force so that if such a thing ever happens again, the response time will be better, perhaps even preventing these crimes in the future.” Cavenaugh folded the paper he’d read from and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He looked expectantly at the reporters.
“Mr. Cavenaugh, will we be hearing from Jarl or Celia?” asked a reporter in the front.
“As you know, Mr. Jarl likes to keep private, especially about family matters. He tries to keep his children out of the spotlight as much as possible. I am his appointed representative in this matter.”
“Dana Goode, Daily News.”
“Yes, Ms. Goode? Thank you for your heroism.”
“I have a question as a reporter, not an involved party.”
“All right.”
“Did Mr. Jarl have anything to do with his daughter’s kidnapping?”
“Pardon me?”
“Celia’s kidnapping. Did Mr. Jarl have a hand in it? She was in a Payne and Wedgefield warehouse,” Dana said. “I wondered how that came to be?”
Cavenaugh swallowed. My nose was almost touching the television screen. “I’m sorry, but Ms. Goode your information is incorrect. That is not a Payne property.”
“Well, not directly, but a subsidiary,” she retorted. “Are you suggesting it’s a coincidence?”
“Honestly Ms. Goode, this is not the time, but I will address this now so this rumor stops. Payne and Wedgefield owns many properties throughout the island. We cannot possibly control what happens at every property that has a connection to us. Mr. Jarl had nothing to do with this and in fact reported that his daughter was missing as soon as he became aware.”
“Why was there,” Dana referred to her notes, “a delay in reporting it? I have here a two-day delay.”
“Because she was supposed to be vacationing with a friend in the Bahamas. Believe me, Mr. Jarl reported it as soon as he realized she was not with this other family.”
Dana started to ask another question, but Cavenaugh cut it off. “Thank you all for coming out.”
He walked off into the Payne and Wedgefield building and the camera cut back to talking heads. I turned off the television and called Dana.
“How was I?” she asked.
“Making friends and ingratiating yourself to the rich and powerful as always,” I said.
“Well, this ought to produce some action on their part if nothing else. What a thrill!” She sounded giddy. “Notice he was a Brit?”
“You live for this, don’t you?”
“Yup. Meet me at the newsroom,” she said and hung up.
DANA WAS TYPING FURIOUSLY on her desktop when I entered the dark newsroom. Her laptop was also open and lit up.
“Why do you have a laptop and a desktop both open and running at your desk?” I asked.
“Edward Snowden and Julian Assange,” she said. “The laptop never connects to the internet or anything else. It’s really only a word processor. I don’t use wireless internet, only a hard line. We’re all in the surveillance business now.”
“You do keep your texts and emails simple,” I responded.
“So, what do we do today?”
Dana’s phone buzzed. She read the text and stormed into Pickering’s office, slamming the door behind her. The blinds banged around, providing me a glimpse of Dana and Pickering before settling back against the glass.
Dana charged out three minutes later. She hissed at me, “Let’s go.”
“What was that all about?” I asked when we got in her car.
“We need to go see Jimbo again.”
With few cars on the road and Dana prodding me to drive faster we got to Hull Bay in a hurry. We charged into the little hut called The East End Bar and Grill at the base of the hill. Beaches and marinas in St. Thomas always seemed to have bars.
“You seen Jimbo?” Dana asked the bartender. He pointed to a tree outside near the patio. Jimbo lounged there holding a beer and smoking a cigarette.
He looked at us vacantly when we walked out. Dana hadn’t filled me in on what we were doing.
“Jimbo, have you spoken to Derek today?” Dana asked.
“Nah, man, I don’ speak wid he every day. Just on weekends mostly. What you want now, reporter?” he asked, grinning. “At least you can’t touch he in Jamaica.”
“Yeah, well, somebody did,” Dana said. “Except it wasn’t in Jamaica. I think something bad’s happened to Derek in the Dominican Republic.”
I’d been holding my breath this whole time, worried that something about this screamed cover-up and that the biggest loose ends were Jimbo and Derek. The people behind this must know they might talk.
“We’ve got to hide you,” I said as I looked around the beach. Everyone looked local and casual, a typical beach scene of surfers, fishermen, and drunks.
Jimbo didn’t move. He didn’t seem to care except for a tiny tear running down his massive, passive face. I knew in an instant that Jimbo and Derek had at the very least been lovers.
“Jimbo, Boise’s right. You need to come now. I know a place you can stay,” Dana said as she started to turn.
“No,” said Jimbo.
His body and face held still as granite. The single tear had dried, leaving a trail of salt.
“I’m tired of coming,” he said. “I tell you what I know, now leave me be. I goin’ for a swim. I-and-I need some peace and quiet.”
