Max Collins - Carnal Hours

Now she nodded, her brow knit. “I will try.”

“What about the boy named Jim?”

“Him I didn’t know too well. He was hired more recent, to guard some building materials. They’re putting up a new building at the country club, you know.”

“Could you track him down for me, too?”

“I’ll do better lookin’ for Samuel. You got to remember, Nathan, workers in these islands come and go, gettin’ work and pay by the day or even the hour.”

“But you will try.”

“I will try. I might hear things you wouldn’t.”

“I should think. That’s why I need your help.”

Her brow wrinkled. “In fact…”

“Yes?”

“There’s a rumor I been hearin’. About Lyford Cay.”

She pronounced “Cay” in the Bahamian manner: key.

“What’s Lyford Cay?” I asked.

“The west tip of New Providence-it sticks out, like an island. But it’s not an island, it’s more like…” She searched for the word, then smiled as she found it in the dictionary of her mind. “…a peninsula. Very beautiful- verdant. But it’s bein’ developed, you know.”

“Developed?”

“For houses for rich folks. Right now it’s just palm trees, beaches and plots of land they cleared, but they say, one day, there will be electric lights and phones and plumbin’ and fancy houses.”

“And whose project is this?” I asked, knowing.

“Why, Mr. Christie’s, of course.”

“Tell me about the rumor, Marjorie.”

“There’s a dock there, and a caretaker. Lyford Cay is private property.”

“I see.”

“But there’s no fence or gate yet. You can still drive right in there. Anyway, the caretaker is a local man named Arthur.”

“Colored?”

“Yes. The rumor I’ve been hearin’ is that the night of the killin’, after midnight sometime, Arthur saw a boat pull up to the dock with some white men in it. A car was waitin’ for ’em.”

“That’s an interesting rumor, all right.”

“I know Arthur. He goes to the same church as me-Wesley Church, in Grant’s Town. Or anyway, his sister does. I spoke with her, and she says her brother hasn’t talked to the police about this.”

I leaned forward. “Would he talk to you?”

“I think so. I talked to his sister this afternoon-she’s in housekeepin’ at the B.C.-and she said I could probably find him at Weary Willie’s this evening.”

“Weary Willie’s?”

“It’s a bar, over the hill.”

I stood. “Take me there.”

“Over the hill” was more than directions: it was what the area was called, south of where Government House stood on its ridge, looking the other way; in the virtual backyard of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s plantation-house domicile, the thatch-roofed shacks of blacks crawled up the hill like shambling invaders who would never quite make it to the top.

As the land leveled out, the houses became more substantial, but the flickering of candlelight in windows with shutters, but no glass, indicated the lack of electricity on the far side of the hill. There were no streetlights to guide a pilgrim’s progress on these dark streets littered with roadside ice stands (closed at the moment), sheltered by trees of avocado and silk cotton; but the moonlight showed off the sorrowful gaiety of the clustered houses of Grant’s Town, doused as they were with blue and red and green and pink.

I wasn’t scared, but I had the same white man’s uneasiness I experienced in Chicago whenever I ventured into Bronzeville on the South Side.

“It’s just up here,” Marjorie said, pointing, “on the right. See that fenced-off place?”

“Yeah.”

I pulled the Chevy up in front of an unpainted wooden structure with a thatch roof; over the saloon-style swinging doors a rustic-looking wooden sign bore the hand-carved words “Weary Willie’s.” There were no other cars around, but the open windows leaked laughter and babble and the general sound of people drinking.

“It is okay for a white man to go in there?”

“It’s fine,” she said, with a reassuring smile. “Tourists come here all the time-look closer at the sign.”

I looked up. Beneath “Weary Willie’s” it said: “A Glimpse of Africa in the Bahamas.”

Only there were no tourists inside, just black faces, with the whites of their eyes large and displeased at the sight of me, or maybe the sight of me with Marjorie. Day laborers in sweaty tattered clothing stood at the bar having bottles of that exotic tropical brew known as Schlitz. The round uncovered tables in this kerosene-lamp-lit, wood-and-wicker world were mostly empty, but a native man and a voluptuous, almost heavy native woman were huddled over their drinks at one, in a mating ritual that knew no race. Against the far wall, which had two African-style spears crossed on it, sat an angularly handsome, jet-black young man in a loose white shirt and tan pants and no shoes. He recognized Marjorie and she nodded and we went over to him.

“May we sit, Arthur?” Marjorie asked.

He half-rose, gestured nervously. “Go on.”

A fat barman in an apron that may have, at one time, been clean approached and took our orders; Marjorie asked for a Goombay Smash and I had the same. Arthur already had his bottle of Schlitz.

Marjorie sat forward. “This is Mr. Heller, Arthur.”

I extended my hand and he looked at it, as if it were some foreign object, then extended his. It was a firm but sweaty handshake. His eyes were both wary and troubled in his carved mask of a face.

“He’s trying to help Mr. Fred,” she explained to him.

“Mr. Fred is a good mon.” He spoke in a hushed, rich baritone. “My cousin, he works for him.”

I said, “I’d like to hear about what you saw out at Lyford Cay the night Sir Harry died.”

“I work de night shif,” he said. “In fact, I got to be out there by ten tonight. I use to fish de sponge, you know, before de fungus come.”

I tried to get him on track. “What did you see that night, Arthur?”

He shook his head. “It was a bad night, mon. Storm, it whip de island. I see one of dem fancy motorboats come in and dock, ’bout one in de mornin’. Two white mon, big ones, got off de boat-somebody else, he stay behind with dat fancy boat. It was rockin’, mon. Thought maybe it was gonna sink.”

“Did you approach them? Lyford Cay is private property, right?”

“Right-but dey was white. And I didn’t know what dey was up to, in dat storm-didn’t want to know.” He shrugged fatalistically. “Like dey say, strange t’ings happon in de carnal hours.”

“Carnal hours?” I asked.

Marjorie explained patiently. “In these islands, that’s what they call the time between dark and daylight.”

Our drinks arrived and I gave the barman a buck and told him to keep the change and made a friend. The Goombay Smash seemed to be pineapple juice and rum, mostly.

“It was rainin’ so hard,” Arthur said, “one of de mon, he slip and drop his hair.”

“His hair?”

“His hat, it fly off, his hair too-get wet in de rain.” Arthur laughed. “He chase it like a rabbit.”

One of the men was wearing a toupee, then.

“Did you notice anything else distinctive about him?”

“What?”

“Anything special or odd about his appearance. Him, or the other man?”

His eyes narrowed. “That rain, mon, was really comin’ down, you know. But dey walk right past my shed, you know. I was peekin’ through de window. The fella dat lost his hair, he had a skinny mustache, his nose was all pushed in. The other fella…he was fat, with a scar on his face.”

The back of my neck was tingling.

“What sort of scar, Arthur?”

He drew a jagged line in the air with one finger. “Like de lightning in the sky, mon-it flash across his cheek.”