David Dean - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Poisonous gases seeped into the street like a departing spirit.

He staggered back into the garage and knelt beside her. He pressed the artery at the base of her neck, checking for a pulse. Nothing. The throbbing blood he felt was his own.

He hurried into the house and came back with a wet towel. He tried to wipe the soot from her face, but managed only to streak it. He folded the towel and put it under her head, then sat back on his heels to look at her.

Grief would come later, he supposed, along with the inquest and accusations. But now all he felt was relief.

You can never save anyone, he realized. Not when one wants to die, not when one reaches out to Death like a flame to oxygen. He had always seen it in her, this tremulous wanting.

The sparrow had tumbled from her nest. Perhaps now she was free.

Were not all deaths suicides, he wondered.

Copyright ©; 2005 by Ruth Francisco.

Bill Pronzini is one of the most versatile writers working in the mystery field. Several recent books should interest his fans. Five Star Press has a new collection entitled A “Nameless Detective” Casebook , featuring Mr. Pronzini’s most famous character (from 40 short stories and 28 novels). The most recent Nameless novel is Spook (Carroll & Graf). There’s also a recent stand-alone novel, Alias Man (Walker 2004).

I was sitting in Jocko’s Cafe, at my usual place in front of the open-air window facing Round Bay.

Jocko’s isn’t much. Just your standard back-island roadside bar and grill, mostly frequented by locals black and white and a few slumming tourists, on the southeastern tip of St. John, the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The road that loops around from Coral Bay ends fifty yards from Jocko’s dirt parking lot. End of the line.

The building is two-storied, made of pink stucco, and flanked by palmettos and elephant’s-ears; bar and food service downstairs, Jocko’s quarters upstairs. The pocked-plaster walls are festooned with nautical paintings, none of them very good, and dozens of snapshots of customers with and without Jocko. The furniture is old and mismatched. There are a couple of ceiling fans, a bleached steer head mounted above the bar, a dartboard, and a blackboard with the daily menu chalked on it. Today’s specials are every day’s specials — conch chowder and callaloo, a pair of West Indian dishes.

That’s because Jocko is West Indian, a native of St. Croix. Plump, hairless, skin as sleek and shiny as a seal’s. In one ear he wears a big gold hoop that gives him a lopsided appearance. He smiles a lot, laughs often — a happy man.

The open-air window frames a view of the narrow inlet and the broad expanse of Round Bay beyond, and if you sit at the table in its exact center you can also see much of the far shore — the villa-spotted hills above Coral Bay, and the jungly slopes of Bordeaux Mountain, the highest point on St. John at 1,277 feet. That table and chair are mine by tacit agreement. On the rare occasions when I’m not in the cafe, Jocko refuses to let anybody else sit there. My seat, my window, my view.

On the scarred tabletop was my usual glass of Arundel Cane Rum. Arundel Estate is the oldest continuously operated distillery in the eastern Caribbean, and the only one that makes rum directly from sugar-cane juice. I won’t drink anything else. Jocko imports it for me from Tortola, once the largest pirate community in the neighboring British Virgins. He does it because he likes me. And he likes me for the same reason he reserves my table: I’m his best customer.

We were the only occupants when the man in the yachting cap came in. He’d been in a couple of times before, once to eat lunch and once to drink a beer and give me a couple of curious looks. Big man in white slacks and a patterned island shirt, with a rough-textured face like something sculpted out of wet sand. The yachting cap didn’t mean anything; he wasn’t off any of the pleasure craft anchored out on Round Bay. One of the slumming tourists from Cruz Bay or Coral Bay.

This time he didn’t sit at the bar. Thirty seconds after he walked in, he was standing between me and the window, looking down and smiling in a tentative way.

I said, “You’re blocking my view.”

“Oh, sorry.” He gestured at one of the empty chairs. “Mind if I join you?”

“Why?”

“No particular reason. I’ve seen you here before — always alone. I thought you might like some company.”

“As long as you don’t block the view.”

He positioned the chair carefully to my left, sat down, and fanned himself with his hand. “Hot.”

“Not so bad today. You should be here in July and August.”

“I’d rather not, thanks. My name’s Talley, John Talley.”

“Paul Anderson.”

“Buy you a drink, Paul?”

“I wouldn’t say no. Arundel Cane Rum, neat.”

“I’ll just have a cold beer. Too hot for rum.” He called out the order to Jocko. “I’m a writer,” he said to me.

“Is that right?”

“Books, stories, magazine articles. Down here from New York to look for material, soak up a little local color.”

“And you think I might qualify in the color department. Rumpled, unshaven, rum-soaked — a character.”

“Well, I’ll admit you interest me.”

Jocko brought the drinks and I had some of mine.

“I’m staying up at Coral Bay,” Talley said. “I like St. John better than St. Thomas and this side of the island better than Cruz Bay. Fewer people, none of the conventional tourist atmosphere.”

“So do I. For the same reasons.”

“Been in the Virgins long?”

“Twenty years. Almost twenty-one.”

“Practically a native. You live out here on the tip?”

I nodded. “Saltbox up by Hansen’s Bay.”

“What’s a saltbox?”

“Small square house. Cheap rent.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I don’t do anything,” I said.

“You mean you’re out of work?”

“No. I mean I don’t do anything. Except come here to Jocko’s every day.”

“Retired?”

“No.”

“Independent means?”

“No.”

“Then how do you make ends meet, if you don’t mind my asking?”

I emptied my glass, watching the pleasure boats. Catamarans, mostly. Ketches, sloops, a couple of yawls. A big motor-sailer flying a British flag was making down around the point from Hurricane Hole. It’d be cool out there on her foredeck. The trades were blowing soft today.

“Sorry if I seem nosy,” Talley said. “Writers tend to be that way. Nature of the beast.”

“You really want to know how I make ends meet?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“I stole some money once,” I said.

“You... what?”

“Embezzled it, to be exact. There’s still a little left. That’s what I live on.”

Talley moved in his chair, making it scrape on the rough tile floor. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could feel the pressure of his eyes.

He said, “Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious.”

“How much money did you embezzle?”

“Nearly half a million dollars.”

“My God! You actually got away with that much?”

“That’s right.”

“When? How long ago?”

“Twenty-one years.”

“And you were never caught?”

“Never close to being caught.”

“How did you do it? Where?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “And talking’s thirsty work.”

He signaled to Jocko.

I didn’t say anything until I had a fresh glass in front of me. Then I said, “I was an accountant for an engineering firm in San Francisco, one of the largest in the west. I worked there for ten years. Lived a quiet life alone in a furnished apartment. No vices. Exemplary record. Completely trustworthy employee.”