Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 07 Read online

  “Our little weekly regatta. Not much of a turnout…lousy weather. They’ll be lucky not to get caught out in it.”

  “Is that fella de Martini racing?”

  “De Marigny you mean? Yeah. Sure.”

  “I hear he’s quite a character. Real ladies’ man.”

  The kid shrugged, rubbed the bar with his rag. “I don’t know about that. But he’s a hell of a yachtsman.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. He’s won all sorts of cups, including the Bacardi—and he’s only been at it four or five years. He ought to be in in a few minutes. Would you like to meet him?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  Instead I nursed my rum punch and waited for de Marigny’s race to end.

  Mine was just about to begin.

  When de Marigny entered the clubhouse, he was chatting with two young male club members (possibly his crew), but there was no mistaking him: he was six three, easily, with dark, slicked-back hair and a well-trimmed Vandyke beard; slender, muscular, he wore a polo shirt with the arms of a pale yellow sweater tied around his neck like a clinging lover. I hate that.

  On the other hand, despite Sir Harry’s unflattering description, I’d assumed the Count would be handsome—most gigolos are—but de Marigny had big ears, a prominent nose and fleshy lips. If you were casting Legend of Sleepy Hollow, it would be a close call as to whether to give de Marigny the role of Ichabod Crane or his horse.

  He did carry himself well, with confidence, affable if arrogant, and his two friends seemed hypnotized by his discourse. I couldn’t make out his words, but he had a thick Charles Boyer French accent, which I suppose some women might find charming. Not being a woman, I couldn’t be sure.

  He seemed headed for the bar, so I tossed a quarter tip on the counter, slipped away before the bartender could introduce me, and went out to wait in the Buick.

  Apparently de Marigny had a drink or two, because it was fifteen minutes later before he emerged from the clubhouse, still in his yachting togs but minus his sycophants, and strolled to a black Lincoln Continental. I wondered if Sir Harry’s daughter Nancy had bought it for him.

  Beyond Fort Montagu, aping the curve of the island, East Bay Street became the eastern road, along which were fabulous oceanside mansions on land Harold Christie had most likely sold rich foreigners, and/or rumrunners. But de Marigny took a right, away from this affluence and into the boondocks, and I followed.

  The same bushes and trees that so carefully adorned the grounds of wealthy estates grew wild here, pines and palms and bushes with red berries crowding each other alongside the narrow dirt road, like spectators eager for a look.

  It was tricky not getting made, but the Lincoln kicked up plenty of dust, so I could keep my distance and still keep track of where the Count had headed.

  Then the dust cloud abated, and I knew I’d lost him: he’d turned off somewhere.

  Looking frantically right and left, I didn’t feel panicked for long: there the Lincoln was, stopped in the crushed-rock driveway of a run-down-looking white farmhouse. It might have been an American farmhouse but for its louvered shutters, and limestone construction that dated back a century or two.

  I drove on past, perhaps a quarter of a mile, and found a place alongside the road where I could pull off. Then I left my suitcoat behind but brought along my camera, and walked alongside the road, where the brush was taller than I was, and edged up near the farm.

  Back home there would probably have been a fence to climb or at least step over; here all I had to do was push gently, quietly, sneakily through the tropical brush, like a Jap sniper looking for a target. I didn’t have a rifle, of course, just my lethal little Argus, ready to snap an incriminating photo or two….

  But de Marigny’s afternoon rendezvous was not with the wife of some wealthy crony of Christie’s, or some dusky native gal; rather, with half a dozen colored workers in well-worn straw hats and loose, sweat-soaked clothing. De Marigny’s sweater was no longer tied around his neck—it was gone, in fact—and his polo shirt was sweat-stained and sooty, clinging to a lanky but impressive musculature.

  In the yard, alongside the farmhouse, two workers were adding more driftwood to a roaring fire beneath an old, cut-down oil drum that bubbled like a witch’s caldron. De Marigny’s men were on their haunches, dunking apparently freshly killed chickens—the absence of heads and bloody necks were the tip-off to this trained detective—into what I figured was scalding water.

  And de Marigny was getting right in there with them, squatting down and dipping the chicken corpses by their feet into the boiling water. In fact, he seemed to be showing them how it was done, plucking the feathers from the softened flesh of the dunked birds. The ground nearby had a snowfall of feathers and down.

  The flames were high, and the smoke was thick—even from my vantage point in the brush, my eyes were stinging.

  De Marigny worked hard, maintaining a lighthearted attitude throughout, treating the Negroes like equals. One of them, a handsome, sharp-eyed youth of perhaps twenty-two, his clothes untattered, was clearly second in command. I heard de Marigny call him Curtis.

  This went on for about an hour; I was squatting just like they were, only in the bushes, hoping New Providence didn’t have nasty lizards or poisonous snakes to give me a surprise. But there was only the humidity to make my life miserable, the faint whisper of a breeze ruffling the leaves. At least there were no bugs, like those damn sandflies on the beach….

  Finally de Marigny disappeared inside and came back with his hair combed, the soot smudges washed off and his sweater over one arm. He collected Curtis, spoke for a moment to another of the workers, putting him in charge, and he and Curtis got in the Lincoln, both in the front seat but with the young Negro driving.

  I quickly hightailed it back to my Buick, did a dandy little U-turn considering the space I had, and followed the Lincoln’s dust trail.

  Glancing at Sir Harry’s list of de Marigny businesses—which included a beauty parlor, a grocery store and an apartment house—I didn’t see anything that sounded like a chicken farm. There was something vague, called De Marigny and Company, which had a Bay Street address.

  If de Marigny was such a shiftless son of a bitch, as Oakes had painted him, how’d he assemble such an impressive array of business holdings? Of course, maybe it was his wife’s dough that got him set up in them all.

  On the other hand, he’d been working his ass off plucking chickens, for Christ’s sake, shoulder to shoulder with his black workers. I had been in Nassau only since this morning, but I already could tell that was rare behavior.

  The dust led back to the eastern road, where I caught sight of the Lincoln, turning west. My watch said half-past four, so de Marigny ought to be going home, and if my reading of the Nassau Street map was close to correct, that was the way we were headed.

  It was. The Lincoln turned off on Victoria Avenue, and that jibed with the address I had on the Count. The sea at our backs, we were going up the hill now, moving along a quaint side street flung with palms where little pastel houses built on the incline had stone garden walls with bougainvillea and creepers trying to climb over them, even as flowering trees on the other side peeked over.

  Soon the black touring car pulled into a driveway and drew around to the side of the house to the closed doors of a double garage. Curtis got out and so did de Marigny, not waiting for his driver to come around and open his door for him. What a guy.

  De Marigny’s house reminded me of places I’d seen in Louisiana: a good-size, two-story, vine-crawling pink affair with green shutters and a screened-in veranda above and porch below, and exterior stairs along the driveway side of the house. Unlike many of the neighbors’, with their limestone walls, de Marigny’s garden, to the left of the house, was defined by high, manicured bushes.

  I drove on by, found a place to turn around a couple blocks up the hill, and came back to park on the opposite side of the street, about half a block from the house. The
street was so narrow you had to park on the lip of sidewalk.

  De Marigny’s Lincoln rolled out less than half an hour later. I assumed he was in the car, and took leisurely pursuit. As I passed his house, I could spy, through the open windows, servants scurrying. One of them was Curtis.

  We were back on Bay Street soon, and I was able to put several cars between the Lincoln and the Buick and still keep de Marigny in my sights. It was dusk now, and we both had our lights on. In the thick of the shopping district—it was after five, but shops were still open—he found a parking place. I glided by, found one myself, and was getting out of the Buick when I saw him—in a brown sport jacket, lighter brown pants, cream-color shirt with no tie, and tan-and-white shoes, no socks. Very spiffy. He strolled toward the Prince George Hotel, pausing to light a cigarette beneath the flutter of Allied flags that adorned the entry.

  I noticed that the upstairs office over the storefront next door said H.G. Christie, Ltd., Real Estate, Since 1922. Small world. Anyway, small town….

  De Marigny didn’t go inside the hotel, but walked under an archway between it and the adjacent building, to the Coconut Bar and its beach-umbrellaed tables scattered on the terrace to wharf’s edge, where small boats, sails furled, swayed uneasily in the restless sea. The ceiling of this bar was a broodingly overcast sky.

  Few of the tables were taken, but the Count was immediately waved over by a plump, dark-haired guy of about thirty-five in a handsome pale green suit with wide lapels and a dark green striped tie.

  “Freddie! I want you to meet the most gorgeous girls in Nassau!”

  “Impossible,” de Marigny said, massaging each syllable in his Boyer way, “I know them all…oh! I see I was mistaken.”

  He was: the women sitting with the glad-handing American were lovely young women in their twenties, a brunette with a sexy overbite and a lanky blonde with a nice wide smile. They wore summery dresses and sat with their legs attractively crossed, sipping tropical drinks out of fruit-bedecked coconut shells.

  The American was making introductions as the Count joined them, but their voices were lowered to a normal range now and I couldn’t make anything out. I risked a table within earshot, ordered myself a Coke with lime and watched the lead-gray sea ripple while I eavesdropped.

  “Freddie,” de Marigny said, putting the accent on the second syllable and revealing that his plump American friend shared first names with him, “I must insist you bring these charming girls along tonight. My guest list is shockingly scant.”

  “I’ve got bad news,” the other Freddie said, mock sad. “They’re married.”

  “So am I.” De Marigny shrugged. His smile was as wide as it was casual. “Bring your husbands along! Some of my best friends are husbands.”

  “I’m afraid,” the brunette said, “both our husbands are away on missions.”

  “RAF pilots,” the American Freddie said.

  De Marigny shrugged again. “My wife’s in Maine studying dance. Maybe we old married people, separated from our loved ones, should console one another.”

  The American Freddie said, “He’s got a Bahamian cook who’ll knock your socks off, ladies.”

  I was willing to bet they’d be eating chicken.

  The brunette and blonde looked at each other and smiled; damn near giggled. They nodded first to each other, then to de Marigny.

  “Splendid,” the Count said.

  Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

  The quartet chatted—flirted, I thought, though the American was the most obvious—and soon I decided to fade away. I finished my Coke and went back to the Buick to wait for de Marigny to head back to Victoria Street for his party.

  Which, before long, he did.

  Nassau at night—at least on this overcast night—seemed otherworldly. Giant silk cotton trees cast weird shadows on limestone houses. Garden walls seemed like fortress battlements, and light slanted eerily through the slatted jalousie shutters, closed in anticipation of the storm that had promised itself all afternoon.

  I followed the red eyes of the Lincoln’s taillights and when de Marigny pulled up onto the lawn beside the driveway, I went on by; again I did a U-turn and found a place on the opposite side of the street.

  Before long guests began to arrive, notably a puffy-faced, slickly handsome character with a Clark Gable mustache who pulled his two-tone brown Chevy into the driveway and emerged with a sexy little blonde on his arm. She had Veronica Lake peekaboo bangs and a blue dress with white polka dots and a Betty Grable shape and if she was of legal age, I was Henry Aldrich.

  I counted eleven guests, a mixed group as to gender but resolutely white and well-off in appearance—not counting the RAF wives (who’d arrived with the pudgy American) and the jailbait cutie, who were plenty white, but not affluent. Their ticket of admission was their own pulchritude.

  My window was down and even half a block away I could hear the laughter and chatter coming from the garden patio, so I got out of the car and joined the party. Sort of. The sidewalk was empty and the nearest streetlight was across the way, so nobody noticed me angle around the side of the well-tended bushes to do some professional peeping.

  They were having their dinner party outdoors; a long picnictype table was set, and several male Negro servants in white coats were in attendance, though nothing but wine had been served. Three hurricane-shaded candles and two six-candled candelabras were as yet unlit on the attractively set table. Everybody was having a gay old time, but I didn’t figure it would last long. The wind was coming up, and mosquitoes were nipping.

  This morning, Marjorie Bristol could smell the rain in the air; right now, any idiot could smell it. I could smell it.

  De Marigny had a kitchen match going. Sitting next to him was the blond RAF wife, as he half-stood leaning forward to try to light a candle, lifting a hurricane shade to do so. The wind whipped the flame away from the candle and across the back of the Count’s hand.

  “Merde!” he said.

  “What does that mean?” the jailbait blonde asked wide-eyed.

  “Shit, my dear,” her suave puffy-faced escort rejoined.

  Everyone laughed. Except me. I slapped a skeeter.

  De Marigny singed himself a couple more times, but managed to get all the hurricane lamps lit, and even had the candelabras going, their flames leaning like deckhands on the Titanic.

  “Voila,” he said, admiring his work, and I was thinking that he didn’t seem to know much more French than I did, when the rains came.

  The guests laughed, some of the ladies squealing in a manner that I’m sure they thought was delightfully feminine.

  “Inside, everyone!” de Marigny called, as his black servants quickly removed the table settings.

  The guests, pelted with raindrops, were scattering, fleeing for shelter.

  In my spot in the bushes, I was drenched already.

  “Merde,” I said to myself, and headed back to the Buick.

  And there I sat for a very long time. Machine-gun rain battering the car, drumming on the roof, palm trees swaying, fronds rustling, scratching like sandpaper rubbing together, wind whistling disgustedly through its teeth, carrying sickly sweet floral scents. With my windows up, I was hot in the car, windows fogging up. Heat and rain. Yet I was chilled….

  When the rains came, we covered the shell hole with camouflage tenting; when the tenting had collected water, we drank from its edge, guzzling it greedily, draining some of it into our empty canteens. The rain seemed to rouse even the wounded among us, and we huddled together, wondering when the Japs would come again, with their machine guns, bayonets, mortar shells….

  A crack of thunder snapped me awake, though I at first thought a mortar shell had hit. I was in a cold sweat, only there was nothing cold about it. I craved a cigarette.

  Not a good sign: the only time in my life I ever smoked was those months I was in the Corps, on the Island—Guadalcanal. The nicotine craving came only rarely, since I got back—like the malaria flar
e-ups, one of which seemed to have hold of me now.

  I cracked the window to unfog the windshield. The rain hammered down. I checked my wristwatch: almost midnight. How long had I slept? Had I missed anything? Maybe I ought to take my camera and go wading across the streaming street and crawl through the soaked shrubbery and see if some sort of Caribbean white-folks-only orgy was in progress.

  But about that time the party began to break up; couples found their way to their cars—with the exception of the puffy Clark Gable and his underage Betty Grable. Oh, the happy couple exited, all right, snuggled under an umbrella; but they quickly took the side staircase up to what was apparently an apartment over the garage.

  Lightning flared as the American Freddie left in the company of one of the male guests, an older, distinguished-looking man. That meant the Count was alone with the two RAF wives.

  Maybe de Marigny was going to live up to his reputation.

  Maybe I ought to reach for my camera….

  But then de Marigny, his jacket collar up, made a run for his Lincoln on the lawn. He got it running, backed it closer to the steps which led from the side of the porch. Then one of the servants—Curtis, I think—escorted the blond RAF wife, under an umbrella, to the waiting car.

  I smiled. Looked like I was in business.

  Except that then Curtis went back and returned with the brunette under his umbrella, as well. She joined de Marigny and their blond mutual friend in the front seat.

  Cozy. I thought of some of the other French words I knew: ménage à trois.

  I trailed the Lincoln down to Bay Street, the Buick’s windshield wipers working furiously. His car swayed in the wind; so did mine. Neither vehicle was exactly a featherweight, either. The rain was unremitting. The street was half flooded, completely flooded around blocked drains; the shops were shuttered and shining with rain, turned silver-blue now and then by lightning. A pharmacy’s neon stood out in the night like a modern apparition.

  We went past my hotel—alive with occasional lights, a bed waiting there for me—and headed west. This was the way Samuel had taken Miss Bristol and me, earlier today, a century ago. A little ways beyond Westbourne, which was barely visible as I went by, lights ablaze on the upper floor, the Lincoln pulled in past a post with a hanging wooden sign that said hubbard’s cottages.