Cryptozoica (3 page)

She wore the traditional conical headpiece of a temple dancer that rose to a high, ball-tipped spire. The hat, gilded and gem-bedecked, had an almost three-dimensional quality. Beneath it, the dancer’s face was a fixed white mask of heavy green eye shadow and lips painted in blazing scarlet. Black hair cascaded down almost to her hips. A dozen gold hoops encircled the slender column of her throat.

Although she wore white panungs—baggy Siamese bloomers—the dancer was nude from the waist up. Her arms, held at stiff angles, barely concealed her bosom. Emblazoned on her torso was the sinuously looping body of a python that stretched up from her waistband and twisted between her breasts, extending over her left shoulder and along her arm. The scales of the serpent were edged in white.

No matter how many times Kavanaugh looked at the portrait, he always experienced a disquieting combination of sexual arousal and intestinal distress.

Jarlai placed the glass down on the bar before him just as Kavanaugh heard the door open. He turned around to see Augustus Crowe striding in. The big man loomed well over six feet tall and like Mouzi and Kavanaugh, he wore a Horizons Ultd T-shirt.

The spread of his shoulders on either side of his thickly corded neck was very broad. Because his body was all knotted sinew and muscle covered by deep brown flesh, he did not look his weight of 250 pounds. The stub of an unlit cigar jutted from between his teeth and a black Greek fisherman’s cap was perched at a rakish angle on his head.

“What’s this about another throat-cutting?” he demanded.

Still dabbing at Sanu’s abrasion with a cotton ball, Mouzi said cheerfully, “For such an underpopulated shit-hole, word sure gets around fast in this place.”

Crowe grunted and sat down on a stool beside Kavanaugh. “Especially if it’s about hookers, sex and murder.”

“It wasn’t murder,” Mouzi protested. “Not in the first degree, anyhow. And it never got around to sex.”

“Cutting somebody’s throat has that effect on horniness, I guess,” Kavanaugh commented dryly.

Jarlai placed an open brown bottle of Guinness before Crowe.

“What did you do with the body?” Crowe asked, removing the cigar from his mouth and lifting the bottle to his lips.

Kavanaugh took sip of his gin. “Are you asking me or Slingblade Sally here?”

Crowe swallowed a mouthful of the dark beer and answered, “You.”

“I pushed him into the canal, just in case.”

“Just in case
what?
Her story didn’t add up?” Crowe reached across the bar and took a book of matches from a glass jar. The cover showed stylized illustrations of criss-crossed palm trees superimposed over the bright yellow Cryptozoica logo.

“That’s basically it,” Kavanaugh replied.

Crowe put the cigar back in his mouth and tore off a match. “Well, as interesting as it is, I’m not here to find out about you two conspiring to cover up yet another capital crime.”

“No?”

“No. I just got a satphone call. Howie Flitcroft is on his way here. I was told we should expect him early tomorrow morning.”

Kavanaugh felt his stomach slip sideways, but not in reaction to the liquor. “Howie hasn’t been here since…” His words trailed off.

“Since those investors of his were eaten?” Mouzi supplied helpfully.

Kavanaugh scowled at her, and then shifted his gaze toward the two men who pushed open the door. They were both wiry Moros, wearing a kind of uniform consisting of white turbans, dark slacks, shirts, and black sneakers. Each man had a small automatic pistol holstered at his belt. The letters EAC were hand-stitched in gold thread on their breast pockets. Kavanaugh didn’t need the reminder that the East Asiatic Company owned
Mindanao’s Folly.

At first, the pair of men seemed startled by the diverse collection of people in the big barroom, then they tried to slip on stolid masks of officialdom.

“We’ve been sent by Captain Lars Hellstrom,” said the tallest of the pair in passably good English. “We are looking for Seaman Dai Chinnah. Does anyone here know him?”

“You’re not jackos,” Mouzi said, back-stepping away from Sanu. She moved with smooth grace, her high-cut white shorts snug on her hips. Casually, she put her hands behind her back and kept them there, hooking her thumbs into her pockets. Sanu slid off the stool and moved to the far corner of the bar.

The eyes of the two men flicked to and fro cautiously. The taller man said, “No, we are not policemen. We are EAC security officers, assigned to
Mindanao's Folly.
May I have your names?”

“You go first,” suggested Kavanaugh.

The man’s face registered irritation, but he said smoothly, “I am Lieutenant Azahan. This is officer Ruipender.”

Crowe tried to strike a match but due to the humidity, the sulfur only fizzled, sending up a pungent stench. “Neither of you have any authority here, you know.”

Azahan stiffened. “There is no authority here at all, not even a provost marshal. That is why the Captain sent us, Mr. Crowe.”

“If you knew our names, why’d you ask us for them?”

“
Mindanao’s Folly
has put into port here before. The crew knows all about you here on Little Tamtung.”

A contemptuous smile touched Azahan’s lips. “Especially about you and Tombstone Jack Kavanaugh.”

Kavanaugh raised the glass to his lips, feigning disinterest. “Is that a fact.”

Ruipender spoke for the first time. “It is a fact that all of you here are liars and thieves. Tricksters. You defrauded many powerful, wealthy people and some of those people died. You stay here because you are afraid of their retribution if you go back to your own country. They will have you killed or imprisoned.”

Angrily, Mouzi said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We know enough,” snapped Azahan. “We know you fear coming under the hand of United Bamboo.”

“Bai Suzhen, Madame White Snake herself, owns this place,” Mouzi declared defiantly, pointing to the garish portrait of the Siamese dancer behind the bar. “She won’t be happy when she find out you came here to harass her friends.”

“The United Bamboo Society controls a hell of a lot of ports in this part of the world,” Crowe said casually, still trying to strike a match. “You piss her off, you piss them off. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.”

Azahan’s eyes narrowed for an instant, but he drew himself up haughtily. “We are looking for a member of Captain Hellstrom’s crew, that is all. We were informed about a disturbance here that might have involved him.”

He gestured to the dark pink stain on the floor, then to Sanu and finally to the specks of blood on Mouzi’s shirt. “Do you deny there was a disturbance?”

Mouzi didn’t answer. With a weary sigh of exasperation, Kavanaugh pushed himself away from the bar. “We don’t deny anything. Dai Chinnah was the cause of the disturbance.”

Quickly, Ruipender drew his pistol but he didn’t aim it at anyone in particular. “You will come with us to the ship.”

Kavanaugh walked toward Azahan, seeming to ignore the gun in Ruipender’s hand. “There’s no need for that. We can give you a report right now. We have witnesses.”

Then he lashed out with his right hand, his fingers closing around the gun in Ruipender’s fist. He squeezed, grinding the smaller man’s delicate metacarpals into the unyielding steel frame of the pistol. Instinctively, Ruipender tried to jerk away but Kavanaugh turned with him, locking the man’s right wrist under his arm and heaving up on it with all of his upper body strength. The pain was so overwhelming, Ruipender couldn’t even scream.

As the pistol dropped from his nerve-numbed fingers, Kavanaugh maintained pressure on the captured arm. He forced the man down to the floor.

At the same time, Crowe came up off the bar stool. He hurled his half-full Guinness bottle in an overhand arc toward Azahan, the heavy base striking the man directly in the throat, a quarter of an inch to the left of his larynx. The bottle didn’t break, but Azahan reeled away, clutching at his neck. He clawed for his pistol.

It had barely cleared the holster when Cranio used his wet mop like a bludgeon, slapping the water-soaked strands across Azahan’s face to send him staggering into Crowe’s arms. He easily wrested the gun out of the smaller man’s grip and swept his legs out from under him with a swift kick.

He sat down hard on the barroom floor.

Lips writhing over his teeth, Ruipender fumbled to draw a knife from his pocket with his left hand. Kavanaugh drove his foot into his diaphragm and the man’s features squeezed together like an accordion. His legs drew up in the fetal position.

Releasing the man's arm, Kavanaugh removed the folded butterfly knife from Ruipender’s pocket and tossed it to Mouzi. “Add this one to your collection.”

Wisely, Mouzi had kept her own blades in their scabbards during the brief struggle. Kavanaugh briefly inspected the Guardian .32 ACP automatics and snorted.  They were ridiculous little things with ivory grips and two inch barrels. He figured the only reason Azahan and Ruipender carried them was because slingshots hadn’t been available in the ship’s armory.

Cranio lumbered over to the pair of men and hauled them to their feet by the collars of their shirts, twisting the fabric so it constricted their throats like choke leashes. Azahan uttered gagging sounds, but he appeared to be in less pain than the whimpering Ruipender, so Kavanaugh addressed him.

“Tell Captain Hellstrom that Dai Chinnah was here but we don’t know where he is now. He roughed up Sanu and was asked to leave. You might want to check the canal. He could have had an accident. Little Tamtung is as dangerous a place as Big Tamtung, you know.”

“Yeah,” Crowe said. “Good thing we’re here to walk you back to your boat, isn’t it?”

Cranio marched the two men to the door and shoved them out on the veranda. He refrained from delivering departing kicks to their rear ends. Kavanaugh, Crowe and Mouzi walked out with them.

The sun had fallen completely beneath the horizon, giving the ocean a coppery sheen. Although purple bougainvillea and pink hibiscus flowers turned the road into a surreal kaleidoscope of color, no amount of perfumed flora could disguise the fact that Little Tamtung was scarcely more than a frontier outpost. The houses were all prefabricated structures set upon stilts, rising up out the kunai grass. Painted on the window of a Chinese trade store they passed was the notice: American Cash Only, No Cheques, No Plastic.

Kavanaugh, Crowe and Mouzi walked behind the EAC officers until they reached the quayside. Azahan and Ruipender marched to the end of a rickety dock and to a small motor launch tied to a piling.

Rubbing his bruised neck, Azahan turned to face them. “You have our guns.”

Kavanaugh nodded. “That’s right.”

“We would like to have them back. Captain Hellstrom told us he would make us pay for new ones if we lost them.”

“Technically,” said Crowe, “you didn’t lose them. Just tell him you know exactly where they are.”

Azahan gathered a little courage and squared his shoulders. “Hellstrom will be very angry when we report what happened tonight. He will be even angrier when we tell him how you stole company property.”

“Yeah,” taunted Mouzi. “But he’ll be a lot angrier at
you.
”

“He will take it out on you people, the protection of Madame White Snake notwithstanding. He does not like Tombstone Jack.”

“Not many do,” drawled Kavanaugh. “So?”

Azahan held out a hand. “Our guns. Please.”

Kavanaugh stared at the two men and shook his head in disbelief. He popped the magazines out of the pistols, put them in his pocket and tossed the empty Guardians to Azahan and Ruipender, who caught his left-handed. “There’re your guns. Now get back to your ship.”

Azahan didn’t move. “If you could leave the ammunition on the dock so I could come back for it later—”

Kavanaugh drew his Bren Ten and shouted angrily, “Get the hell out of here!”

The two men swiftly scuttled across the dock and jumped aboard the boat. When the engine started and the mooring line was cast off, Kavanaugh turned toward Mouzi and Crowe. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“Think that’ll be the last we hear from them?” Mouzi asked.

“We can hope that Chinnah didn’t have any influential family or friends.”

Mouzi nodded, and then smiled almost shyly. “Thanks for covering for me, Captain K.”

“It’s my job,” he replied gruffly. “You’re part of the Horizons Unlimited crew.”

Crowe snorted. “She’s the
only
Horizons Unlimited crew. That reminds me—I’ll need you tomorrow when I tear apart the
Krakatoa
’s bilge pump. It’ll be a good excuse not to take Flitcroft out fishing.”

The
Krakatoa
was a thirty-six foot converted trimaran motorized sailboat, built by Denmark’s Quorning Company. It had served as Crowe’s home for the last couple of years. They could see the boat in her customized berth, lovely and clean-lined. The scrubbed deck was as white as her furled canvas, the teak railings polished to the color of old honey.

Mouzi put an index finger to her nose and snapped it away in a short salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Gaze fixed on the EAC launch cutting a foaming wake toward the distant bulk of
Mindanao’s Folly,
Kavanaugh remarked absently, “Two captains but with a single crewman between them.”

“Crew-woman,” Mouzi corrected testily. “If you can’t tell the difference by now, you’ve been here way too long.”

Kavanaugh favored her with a slit-eyed glare. “You’re about half right.”

Crowe finally managed to strike a match into flame. As he applied it to the end of his cigar, he said, “Not much like the old days, is it?”

Kavanaugh nodded gloomily. “Nothing is. See you tomorrow. I’m sure Howie will expect a breakfast meeting.”

Crowe regarded him, blowing twin streams of gray smoke through his nostrils. “He’s not the boss of me.”

“Not anymore,” Kavanaugh replied turning away. “He’s just one of our landlords…and we owe ‘em all big-time back rent.”

Sunset made a pale rose haze against the dark humid sky, dimly lighting the footpath Kavanaugh followed to his stilt house. A bamboo handrail and six steps extended up to a small porch. Behind the house was a concrete landing pad with a tall stone wall protecting the area from the storm surges that occasionally boiled in from the bay.

Secured to the pad by a webwork of steel guy-wires and eyebolts was a six passenger ASTAR B2 helicopter. A peeling red and yellow decal on the portside door panel declared the big chopper was the property of Horizons Unlimited Tours, Little Tamtung Island, a Subsidiary of Cryptozoica Enterprises.

Kavanaugh walked up the short flight of stairs and opened the screen door. He hadn’t bothered to lock it. Like the exterior, the interior of the house wasn’t very memorable. He did not turn on the overhead lights. There wasn’t anything in the room he cared to see. There was a daybed, an old TV he almost never watched because the reception was so problematical, a bookcase, a couple of wicker chairs along with a few odds and ends that might have been junk or rare
objet d’art.

The grinning, bleached-out skull of a Deinoncychus he used as a paperweight could have been both. It rested atop a scattering of Horizons Unlimited promotional brochures, advertising package tours to the Cryptozoica Spa and Living Laboratory.

The house felt like a furnace, despite the cooling rain shower. Even after five years in the South Seas and two and a half on Little Tamtung, he still suffered from the heat. He stayed because the island had become his home as well as his prison, his own Elba.

Kavanaugh had never quite managed to think of the house as his home, even though he had paid too much for it. Raised in a big old Indiana farmhouse, his idea of a home was three stories high with a ceiling full of junk cast off and forgotten by four preceding generations.

He unclipped the Bren Ten’s holster from his belt and put it on a shelf above the day bed. Taking off his sweat-soaked shirt was like stripping away another layer of skin. He tossed it over the back of a kitchen chair, ignored the two cockroaches that shook their feelers at him indignantly, and opened his small, college-dorm size refrigerator. It wasn’t much cooler than the rest of the house, but the bourbon bottle was still on the top shelf.

He poured an inch into a nearly clean glass and slid the Blue Train CD into the player. With the haunting notes of Coltrane’s trumpet as an accompaniment, he carried the bourbon out to the porch.

Kavanaugh stood and sipped at the tepid liquor and absently traced the scar tissue along his right rib cage, then fingered the weal curving down from his hairline that pulled the outside corner of his right eye slightly out of line.

The scars had matching saddle-stitch patterns. A couple of times, women in the Phoenix of Beauty had remarked about the symmetrical way the scars lined up along his body. He knew they were hinting to hear the story of how he had incurred the injuries, but he never told them, for several good reasons.

The memories of the attack were hazy, like a dimly remembered nightmare from childhood. Primarily, he didn’t talk about it because he knew no one would believe the culprits were a pack of vicious Deinonychus. Even pointing out the skull of the creature that had sunk its fangs into his right side wouldn’t have convinced them.