In Flames (4 page)

How many drinks…

Things were slipping out of control, my glass was full again, more breakfast of champions. I was accepting no substitutes and I could see, or I thought I could see, some strange movement behind the bar.

Christ almighty, what's she doing…

Elaine had an empty beer bottle in her hand, and she was swinging the bottle at Delgado Vinny, repeatedly, until catching the back of his head with a glancing blow.
What the hell is this
…her idea of fooling around? How did he piss her off? Vinny didn't recoil, he took the hit without even turning to see where it came from, simply kept right on walking out from behind the bar and looking straight ahead. Immune. The island band played louder. Faster. Some couples danced, many guests had already left or were leaving. Vinny walked off into the dark, lurching toward the beach before disappearing in a grove of palm trees.

Ferg stayed seated by the side of the terrace, foot tapping out of rhythm, glassy eyes on the band, his features so drained his face resembled a rotted wooden mask. He was oblivious with drink, body flopping over the chair like a sack of wet mud. Not that I could absorb or judge with any accuracy much of what was happening, as I was myself getting bombed on Irish whiskey.

Elaine
…she'd enlighten me, I only had to steady myself, work up the courage, and talk to her straight. Attention must be paid, isn't that what they say. I stared hard at her working behind the bar. She stepped out and walked across the terrace passing close to me, and I screwed up the nerve to reach over and touch her dress and it clung to my hand.

She stopped and brushed away my fingers. “You still sitting here? Get off your butt and dance. The ambassador's wife is all alone over there, go do yourself a favor.”

Christ, she was tough. I wondered, through the whiskey mist, what I'd done to tick her off, even worse what damningly accurate drollery had Delgado Vinny launched that earned him a whack on his head with a beer bottle. Pausing to say good night to some of her guests, Elaine chatted amiably, if quickly, as she worked her way around to the edge of the terrace closer by the beach where she lingered, listening and watching as though sure she wasn't being watched. But she was, I had my boozy eye on her. Emboldened by whiskey I'd have given all the world to embrace her, walk her off under those palms and ease her down on the sand. Incredible, but Ferg began throwing money at the band. Real bills were flying. “Don't stop!” he shouted. “Keep playing. Louder, Goddamn it…”

The ambassador held his wife's arm, and without saying good night to anyone they rushed from the club, speeding away in the embassy's armored limo.

I turned, and Elaine was no longer by the edge of the palm grove. She'd disappeared. I grabbed a chair for balance and stood…
caramba,
the band was loud. I walked, determined and careful, toward the spot by the palm trees where Elaine had paused only a moment before, and from the darkness she reemerged and ran right past me. “Get out of my way.” The green dress vanished inside the club, and I stood as if nailed to the ground, the band banging away like mad bats out of hell, and Ferg leaning over one side of his chair as if he were about to roll off and curl up on the terrace tiles like a beggar sleeping in cathedral plaza shadows.

At two a.m. Elaine was back behind the bar, locking up. A few remaining guests heading toward the beach for a moonlight skinny dip called out to me. “C'mon, Dan, don't be shy.” The band was packing up their gear. I polished off an iced coffee and was feeling better, walking without support, which was more than anyone could say for Ferg, wobbling off in the direction of his manager's suite, muttering to whoever would listen. “I'll be right back. Where the hell's my band? I don't feel so good, Elaine, the doctor still here? Where's Doc Sánchez? Florio Sánchez, you here…” No answer. “Where's Vinny? He here?”

I looked around and the other remaining guests looked around. A couple of servers were busy cleaning tables. “Ferg,” a guest said, “you ought to go lie down.”

“Go fuck yourself.” Ferg regarded the speaker with murder in his eyes. “Hey, Elaine, get Doc Sánchez, I feel awful.”

This baffled me, I didn't know what was happening, and some other guests clearly didn't want to know, as they headed straight for the parking lot.

“Elaine…” Ferg's voice, distraught. “Get everybody out of here. It's too goddamn late.” He staggered off and somewhere inside a door slammed. Elaine appeared exhausted. She stood still as though listening to a faint noise growing closer. Skinny-dippers stumbled half-dressed from the palm grove and onto the terrace. At first I couldn't make out what they were saying, a hurried word here and there.

“Vinny's in the mud…”

“God almighty, poor bastard's dying out there.”

I followed the swimmers racing through the palm grove, skidding along sand dunes down to the shoreline. Delgado Vinny's body lay crumpled at the water's edge, his head a shapeless mass in moonlight, a tangle of red tissue and bone shards above his shoulders to which it was difficult ever to attribute life much less a capacity to surrender it. I stood rooted in terror, blinking, staring down at his corpse, at the cloud of insects whirring around his shattered skull. A point-blank shotgun blast was how it appeared, but the band had been playing so loudly I'd heard nothing. No one had heard. Confusion and fear seized my brain, a panicky wash of blood rushed over my face, and I struggled for breath, wanting to cry out, but I couldn't. I'd never seen a murdered person.

When the cops arrived that night, they questioned everyone separately and briefly, almost ritually, as though going through the motions of a procedure they'd performed too many times before and appeared relieved to finish the job and leave.

They barely listened as they questioned the remaining guests, including me. The skinny-dippers were no less terrified, even as the cops seemed to be merely going through the motions of investigation, unsurprised, uncaring, perhaps even glad a radio loudmouth was gone for good, the island better off with Delgado Vinny's permanent silence. They detained no one and were gone well before sunrise. They seemed to want to learn as little as possible and from me they found out nothing. I shared my confusion with no one.

When Florio Sánchez, the doctor who came to treat Ferg, left the club, I said to Elaine, “If I can help here, in any way, please…” and she only turned her back and walked away.

Later I got little sleep and by morning sea breezes rattling the window screens woke me. I hadn't closed the shutters and my room was awash in sunshine. San Iñigo light, always intense, was rarely what you'd call blissful, and this was an especially harsh light the morning after a man—a funny, charming man, popular and perceptive—had his head blown off for no apparent reason. Which of his many truths turned out to be his death warrant, I had no idea.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I listened to club noises. Gardeners trimming and mowing. Wind shaking lines on yacht masts. Dishes and cutlery rattling in the kitchen. I sat there, wondering how Ferg was doing, did he know about Vinny?

Opening my bedroom door and stepping outside, I stopped as soon as I heard Elaine's voice coming from the terrace. “Do the crab for lunch, cold in a salad. And put a case of Tropicale on ice. What are you waiting for, c'mon, last night is over, it's finished…” Her voice was monotone, no fear or anger, the way she usually addressed her staff without any emotion. I found her outside at the bar, clipboard in hand, the terrace spick-and-span, no one would have guessed what had transpired the night before. She wore a yellow clinging number, nothing underneath, breasts swaying as she leaned across the bar, fresh white rose tucked behind her ear. Apart from dark rings under her eyes, she showed no sign of anything out of order, everything was falling back into place again.

“Is Ferg feeling better?” I said.

“That was his third heart attack. He's on digitalis.” Still the monotone. “You didn't know? Okay, you haven't been here long enough. He won't last.”

“He's at the hospital?”

“They're pretty useless there.”

I was at a loss for what to say next. She sensed this, Elaine was quick like that. “My husband's giving up on life, he doesn't know what's going on around him now. Here, I got something for you.” She handed me a letter. “They left it a little while ago.”

The letter was from the police, requesting Sr. Daniel Shedrick to appear at headquarters within the next seventy-two hours for further questioning.
Had everyone received a summons like this?
Seventy-two hours, they weren't exactly in a hurry, not that I had much to add to what I'd already told them the night before, which was little enough, even if it was almost everything I knew. Almost, but not quite. I'd only just met the poor guy who was killed. The police may have realized this, believed me, and the summons was simply following standard procedure. I'd said nothing to them about an empty beer bottle or Elaine rushing past me from the beach. For some reason that I couldn't precisely articulate, but no doubt a credit to intractable obsession, I was loath to implicate Elaine.

An island woman came into the bar and showed Elaine a basket of fish. Elaine glanced at the fish and counted money out into the woman's open palm. “Take them to the kitchen.” She turned back to me. “Don't you have to work?”

“Not this weekend.” I showed her the letter from the police. “I talked to them last night, we all did. What more do you think they want?”

“You'll find out when you get there. Relax, you don't need a lawyer, they won't bite you.” She seemed so unconcerned, a man murdered on her club beach and she showed no reaction, no indication the miserable crime had anything to do with her, zero anxiety, not a sign of what happened only hours before. Elaine appeared immune. “Only don't drag it out, Dan, that's my advice. Get it over with, go see them now. You'll feel better for it.”

Perhaps I was only imagining things, but I thought the club staff were also behaving oddly that morning, the only evidence I could spot of anything out of order, a recognition something amiss. The servers were going about their duties attentively enough, but every so often one of them fixed me with an angry glare—I was sure of this—and the others fell silent, turning their backs to me. They must have known something about Elaine and me.

“Police headquarters,” said Elaine, “you'll find it right behind the courts building, just off the square with the Columbus statue and the big neon sign, up near the embassy. You can't miss it.”

I knew the sign. I drove past the illuminated billboard every weekday on my way to and from the job site at the Xy Corp. harbor. The electric tubing glowed like a giant Times Square advertisement, blinking out a golden message over the city…
San Iñigo y Los Estados Unidos—Los aliados juntos eternamente
.

I parked in the square near the white statue, the great discoverer Columbus gazing out at a green sea of morning, eyeing his competition on the headland, the taller icon, also white, the concrete effigy of
El Cristo Redentor
.

I walked quickly, sweat soaking my shirt. I wanted to get this over with. Whatever her reasons, Elaine suspected—even more damning, she seemed to believe—I wouldn't incriminate her. She was so eager for me to keep my appointment with the police. I didn't share her enthusiasm, however. I was nervous, and turned down the wrong street. At the razor-wired, cinder block blast wall surrounding the U.S. embassy, I looked up at the windows covered in thick metal screens, and the Stars and Stripes flying from the roof. Police headquarters was on the next block, where I found another blast wall, and heavy iron bars over the windows to keep prisoners in and overheated mobs out. At the gate I showed my summons to the guard, and as I entered the building I was hit in the face by the stink of urine and feces rising up from cells below street level. Dark-skinned policemen climbed the stairs, puffing for air, their faces sweaty, brightened with grins of satisfaction in a job well done. No air-conditioning at police headquarters, not for cops or their charges. In the reception hall, a mestizo priest in a smudged white cotton cassock hovered near the stairs, waiting to be allowed down to the cells to hear whispered confessions or give the last rites. He looked like a man of saintly strength and great patience, a man accustomed to waiting and waiting, saying his Rosary, reading his breviary, pacing the floor. His brown eyes were soft, gentle, charismatic, and despite his age—mid-forties—he had the intense look of a newly admitted seminarian. Taped to the mud-colored walls around the reception hall were photos of defeated insurgents, pictures of corpses hanging from trees along roadsides up in the hills, where bodies dried like raisins in the sun.

The desk officer, a major, gave me a nod, and pointed to a chair beside his desk. “Sit.” I handed him my summons. “Shedrick, Dan. When did you get here?”

“A few weeks ago.”

“What for?” He sounded astonished. “Why leave America?”

“I got a contract with Xy Corp.”

“Best you could do?” The police major shook his head, as a pitying expression passed over his eyes, brown eyes too big for his face, large ears set at right angles to his skull lending him an unfortunate resemblance to mongrel dogs inhabiting shantytown
barrios
outside the city, many of the dogs rabid. “Too bad, señor.” He leaned back in his chair. “We'll get back to Xy Corp. later. Now tell me something, before you came here, you know the Fergusons?”

“Walter and Elaine?”

“The club owners, right. He die yet?”

“He's very sick. His wife doesn't hold out much hope for him.”

“Sorry to hear.”

What disturbed me most about the police major was the way he kept looking at me in the same way Elaine did, on those off times when she bothered to look at me at all. Curious, yet cool, with a touch of contempt grabbing me right where it hurt most.

“You need a drink, Señor Shedrick?” Without waiting for a response, the police major waved to an orderly near the stairs. “Of course I realize you have no idea what happened there last night, am I right? Nothing more you can recall now, not even after a good night's sleep. No more than anyone else at that party remembers any goddamn thing at all, no one there
afectado
, everyone untouched.”

I squirmed in my chair, and the major noticed, which made me even more uncomfortable. Two glasses of fruit juice arrived, and the major took a bottle of white rum from a drawer. He raised the bottle and looked at me questioningly.

“Thanks, officer, I could use a splash.”

He poured some liquor in each glass, generously. “Your health, Señor Shedrick. I imagine you at least know one of our citizens was killed on the club beach last night. Too many others didn't even admit they knew that much. I keep wondering why they lied to us.”

“Maybe they weren't thinking when they spoke. It was late, everyone had a lot to drink.”

“Maybe. He was a famous man in our country, Vinny was. The whole story about him is in the newspaper today, on the radio, all over TV. Many people miss Delgado Vinny, they loved that crazy joker. Forgive me the way I think out loud here, señor, I always feel a little lost when it comes to what might be political crimes. So much violence here is simply random, the victims never typical, no matter what the media say. But political killers, they're professional assassins—
sicarios
who put ads online offering to kill for a fee—their victims carefully selected. In my work, you understand, señor, I'm more used to crimes committed by common criminals, violent and poor men out for sex or some cash. Every day we pick up a few bodies in the
barrios
. But on private beaches? Seldom, and not at a club with armed guards.”

Somewhere behind me, the priest snapped his prayer book shut with an audible bang. The troubled sound resonated through the reception hall. The desk major paid no notice.

“More rum, señor?”

“I'm okay.”

The drink was refreshing, relaxing me, insofar as anyone can relax during a police interrogation, only my second, after the few cursory questions the night before, and not counting the stateside TSA examinations we have to go through in airports. My glass was half drained, and the drink certainly beat being thirsty, rum was welcome, and the police major's conversation wasn't entirely uninteresting. He was no longer eyeballing me, but seemed to be enjoying his drink, growing more engrossed in rattling on with gossip about the Fergusons.

“Twenty-five years ago,” he said, leaning back, “Ferguson came down here when they found oil. He made a fortune trading leases, he was a tax expert and wrote the new laws for the oil company, then he took his big money out and went back home, up north to Virginia, and had a great sailing yacht built in Italy. But he was a bad sailor, didn't listen to advice, and sailed straight into a storm off New Jersey. In September in the hurricane season, very stupid. The boat was smashed on a beach, two men in his crew died, and their families sued Ferguson. He lost almost everything he had up there. The New York Yacht Club kicked him out for rotten sailing, and he fled back down here. To San Iñigo with her, the kid, she wasn't even nineteen yet.”

The major smiled broadly at this point almost as if implicating me as well in the runaway. He seemed to enjoy the child bride aspect. According to him, when Ferg returned to the island for a second time—“With his young bride, Elaine,” the major noted and winked—there was no Club Saint Ignatius for the albinos, its white buildings weren't yet mixed in among the tall green palms, and the Olympic pool and golf course and yacht harbor were still waiting to be built.

Ferg himself never sailed again. Those early years for him and Elaine, starting out all over from scratch, must have been exciting, if trying. What sort of life were they leading? Was Elaine already wearing clingy dresses, nada underneath? Which men did she hop into bed with, back before the real
yanqui
invasion; did she get it off with locals? And Ferg's heart attacks, when did that misery start, what anxieties caused those, a fortune lost, the hard struggle to rebuild, the adolescent who was his wife floozying around with other men. On a single hot morning, I'd held Elaine in my arms, a white rose from her hair entangled and crushed in sweat-soaked sheets.

The desk major intimated there were other Americans like the Fergusons now in San Iñigo. He wasn't at all self-righteous or affronted by this, even when he muttered matter-of-factly that by this point there were “probably too goddamn many.” A whole clubful, he seemed to imply, like the Saint Ignatius member who suspected his local driver was sleeping with the member's wife, so he hired a couple of Xy Corp. investigators to interrogate the driver at sea, trawling him off the side of a motor launch until the driver informed on the wandering wife or he drowned. “The driver drowned,” the police major said, shaking his head, “and shit like that is going too far. In San Iñigo, señor, we're no barbarians.” (Anguished cries from reeking cells in police headquarters belied his disclaimer.) No one, not even the U.S. ambassador, could prevent the cuckolded club member from being deported off the island paradise of San Iñigo, but with help from the embassy he managed to avoid manslaughter charges. The Xy Corp. investigators were whisked away, stateside, never heard of again, and the company denied all involvement.

Someone on police headquarters stairs shouted, “Padre Cardenio,
vámonos.
Rápidamente
…”

And as the priest hurried to the staircase, the desk major rose to follow him. “Someday we talk more about the Fergusons. Gracias, Señor Shedrick, adios.” He tossed the summons back to me as if dispensing with the remains of his lunchtime hamburger to a panhandler in the cathedral square.