Майкл Коннелли - The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

“Call me Len,” I tried to correct him, but he wasn’t listening.

“You bought that little house on East Road,” he said.

“How did you know that?” I asked. He just shrugged. The longer I stayed on St. Pierre, the more I realized that everyone pretty much knew everything about everybody on the small island.

“What are you drinking, Mr. Len?” he asked, his smile wide and generous. “You know I make the best rum punch on de island.”

“Oh yeah? Well, let me be the judge of that,” I said. After a month on the island I was becoming an expert in rum punches. They say the recipe is “one part sour, two parts sweet, three parts strong, four parts weak.” Tubby made it differently. I took one sip and immediately was overpowered by the rum.

“Damn, Tubby! You got the strong and the weak mixed up. Not that I’m complaining.” I laughed.

He laughed with me when he saw my reaction. “I don’t believe dat old recipe. A true rum punch should be ‘one parts sour, two parts sweet, three parts weak, and four parts strong, and if you finish it, you’ll know that you belong.’” He grinned. “At least that’s what we say here in St. Pierre.”

I did finish it, but even after drinking many more of Tubby’s special rum punches over the years, I still wasn’t sure if I belonged.

A few days after meeting him in the Yacht Club, I ran into Tubby again. I had decided to go for a dive on St. Pierre’s acclaimed Purple Reef, a protected underwater site where the coral gave off a purplish glow and the variety of tropical fish supposedly was unsurpassed at any other dive sites around the island. To my surprise, it was Tubby who would accompany me on the dive.

“You drive a taxi, make a mean rum punch, and now you’re gonna go on a dive with me?” I asked him as we sat in the boat in our wetsuits. I was bewildered by his work ethic. “What don’t you do?”

He just laughed softly at my question. “Well, Mr. Len, I don’t play the piano. But I really wish I could.”

After purchasing the land where I planned to build the Sporting Place and hiring a local construction crew, I was having trouble communicating exactly what I wanted done. It wasn’t that the crew chief and I didn’t literally understand each other; there were subtle things I couldn’t convey. I needed someone local as a go-between—a liaison between myself and the crew. I thought of Tubby immediately.

I tracked him down at a high school where he was refereeing a cricket match. I sat in the grandstand in the hot sun for almost three hours while the crowd clapped and cheered at action on the field I couldn’t follow. A batsman swatted the ball with the flat end of the bat and then ran to a post and back. Sometimes another runner would run while a different batsman hit. Fielders would try to stop a ball from getting through to what looked like an outfield, and the pitchers, or what I learned were the “bowlers,” threw with as much velocity as some hard-throwing baseball major leaguers. Sitting there, I had no idea who was winning and how the game was scored, but when the small crowd began to get up and leave, I guessed the match was finally over.

I met him on the field and offered to buy him a beer. We got together at a picnic table near the field out of the sun and I laid out my proposal. I wanted him to work for me. To help me get the Sporting Place off the ground. I told him he could work part-time and continue his other gigs, or I could use him full-time with the promise of continuing once the bar was done as its manager and main bartender. He didn’t hesitate. He told me he would take the job even before I told him how much I would pay him for his services. “You pay me fair, Mr. Len, I’m sure of that,” he said while looking me in the eye. “I don’t want to have to fill in driving Murvin’s minibus or working at the Yacht Club only when they call. It’s time I do one thing good, not many.”

Tubby became more than just an employee. He was really a partner. And he was a friend. The best friend I had on St. Pierre. The Sporting Place was as much his as mine. Despite how close we had become, how much I trusted him, I wasn’t going to bring him in on what was potentially a very dangerous affair. After I hired him he got married, and now, with three young girls and his wife pregnant with a fourth child, there was no chance I would risk getting him involved.

I put the two breadfruits on top of the bar exactly where I found them earlier in the day. I reached under the bar and pulled out the cutlass I kept there for whenever Tubby or I needed to crack open a coconut. I slowly sliced through the top of one of the breadfruits. It came apart easily—its center had been hollowed of flesh and seeds. As it split in half, the tinted brown plastic packets filled with white powder spilled out onto my mahogany bar. I stared at them for a moment. I did the same to the other breadfruit. More brown packets fell out.

All of the Caribbean islands were ripe for smuggling, but St. Pierre had a reputation as being mostly immune to hard drugs and drug smuggling. The island did have its share of ganja, and occasionally there would be a big bust in the waters around the island or at customs at the port or airstrip, but for whatever reason, the hard stuff and what followed was kept out.

I continued to stare at the plastic packets of powder. I knew where I could reach Superintendent Keith McWilliams. He was who I should have called. But I remembered what I felt when I saw the flashing lights of the ambulance in front of Adolphus Grainey’s house. What the man took from them to protect his neighbor—from something I gave to him. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and took out the card I was given earlier by Mr. Arjoon. I turned on my cell phone and punched in the numbers that were on the card.

“Mr. Buonfiglio,” he answered. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “How did I know I would get your call?”

The sound of his voice made me cringe. “I don’t know. I guess you have skills others don’t.”

He laughed. “I think not, just business instincts. That’s all. And you are calling to tell me you have what I need to conduct my business?”

“Yeah, I’ve got them at my place. I can meet you there in an hour.”

There was a pause on the line. “I hope you use good sense, Mr. Buonfiglio. It would be bad for all if there were a lapse in your judgment. I know a bit about you. As I said, I think it’s good business to understand what motivates potential partners.”

“You don’t know a thing about me,” I grumbled. “I’ll see you in an hour.” I cut off the line and sat for a moment. What I did in New York was public record. Why I did it I knew, wasn’t.

I quickly turned off all the lights in the bar and headed out to my jeep. I was moving on pure instinct now. There were no deep thoughts and introspection about what I really should do. I was just letting my mind follow my body, rather than the opposite. The same feeling I had on that morning in June. I know now I should have handled things differently then. Doing what I did on that day changed my life. On that day for those people, they had no choice; their lives, their futures were not in their hands. But mine was. And my family’s. I had a choice then, and I had a choice now. Or did I really?

An hour later I was sitting alone in the semidarkness of the Sporting Place. The only lights on were the lighting under the bar and behind the bottle display; they gave off a dim greenish glow. You couldn’t see much in the bar overall, but when Arjoon arrived, the two breadfruits on the bar would be easily visible.

I was sitting at one of the tables. I had thought about keeping the cutlass close by, but then decided against it. The cutlass was what I had always known as a machete, a tool for cutting away brush. But since moving to St. Pierre, I had adapted the Caribbean term for the tool. It was a household staple on the island. You could see them dangling from the hands and even belts of men walking to work in the mornings. There was almost no gun violence on St. Pierre. Gun laws were strict, and firearms were illegal without a series of hard-to-obtain permits and expensive tariffs. Attempts at gun smuggling, and there had been a few since I had lived on the island, were dealt with harshly. As an alternative, the cutlass was often a cause of violence and crime. And when it occurred, it wasn’t pretty. Thankfully those instances were also rare. But whoever put a bullet in Ricky Sagee’s head had a gun. It very likely could have been Arjoon. The cutlass, even if I were skilled in using it, would do me no good if Arjoon had a gun. What would? I really had no idea.