Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

But when he broached the subject to Emily later-unlike him, she’d slept like a log late into the morning-she’d simply refused to see things his way. After all the trouble they’d gone to the night before to provide the police with a dead Machete Man, another sacrifice was out of the question just yet, she told him. They’d have to let the stir die down-then they could start working tourists or down-islanders, people who wouldn’t be missed, and find a chamber other than the Oubliette in which to dispose of the bodies.

Or even better, she said, they could come up with a new way of releasing their sacrifices’ ehehas -something that would look natural and not be associated with the Machete Man. Bennie already had more than enough hands to get him safely across the bridge to the other world, said Emily, so why not turn their attentions to lone hikers in the forest who could be made to look as if they’d fallen from the cliffs, or lone bathers who would appear to have drowned?

Emily chucked Phil under the chin, told him to be patient, that he was her loving man and no other could ever take his place, then raised her loupe to her eye again and went back to examining the tiny brown shallowly cupped bone fragment she believed to be part of the cranium of a five-hundred-year-old Carib neonate.

Stay busy. The important thing was to stay busy. After Vogler left, Lewis made his first appearance at Apgard Realty since Hokey’s death. He’d seen Doris at the funeral yesterday, but it seemed to Lewis there was something different about her today. A gleam in the eye, perhaps; one less button fastened on her blouse. It occurred to Lewis that he was a single man again-and Doe was such a distant cousin that marriage wouldn’t have been out of the question. All the gals would be setting their caps for him, he reminded himself-he’d have to be careful, watch out for snares. All in all, though, he expected to be dwelling in nookie heaven for the foreseeable future.

But thinking about the future only brought on the dread again. Even though the Epps and Bennie appeared to know what they were doing, Lewis had read enough true crime stories to know how even an infinitesimal clue could give a killer away. A strand of hair, saliva, a shoe print…

Shoe print? No problem there, chappie, thought Lewis, glancing out the window. Johnny had been right: Tropical Storm Sylvia, which had begun while he was still closeted with Vogler, continued to piss buckets. Here in town, great silver sheets of rain were hitting the cobblestones so hard an ankle-high mist hovered over the cobbles of Tivoli Street.

Still Lewis couldn’t entirely dispel the feeling of dread that had been haunting him all morning. And Vogler’s comment about Delusional Disorder being contagious hadn’t helped any, especially because it fit with what little he really knew about the Epps.

The delusion had obviously taken hold of Emily first-perhaps she’d been traumatized by the scene at the chieftain’s deathbed-but Phil surely shared it now. And for Bennie, if Lewis had understood Vogler correctly, this dying breath business wasn’t a delusion. More like a matter of religious belief. Which no doubt made him the most dangerous of the three.

But Lewis wasn’t really worried about “catching” the delusion, contagious or otherwise. He’d felt nothing the first time, and there wasn’t going to be a second.

To ensure that, however, he’d need to get some blasting supplies. And since it wouldn’t do to apply for a permit, he’d have to visit the black market. Which on St. Luke meant one person: Bungalow Bill. Bungalow Fucking Bill. Cheese-an’-bread, thought Lewis: I hope he’s sober.

As much of a horror as the weekend had been in other ways, financially it had been a blessing for Holly-two busy nights at Busy Hands, lots of extras and lots of tips. So when her first client Monday morning-the hemiplegic Helen Chapman, up on the ridge-laid an extra twenty on her, Holly decided to visit Vincent at the Sunset Bar and parlay the Jackson and a neck rub into an eighth of rain forest chronic.

Vincent was wearing his customary tight yellow tank top, which contrasted dramatically with his brown skin. He tossed Holly a bar towel to dry her rain-drenched hair. He had drawn the pull-down bamboo screens that surrounded the circular bar, leaving only a narrow opening for a doorway. It was cozy inside, if humid, and the rain on the round tin roof sounded so much like a steel drum band that she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear it break into “Yellow Bird” or “Jamaica Farewell.”

Holly came around the bar, worked on Vincent’s neck for a few minutes, then started working on his arms. The distal surface of Vincent’s right arm was striped horizontally with short, irregular raised scars from shoulder to wrist. Scar tissue was tricky-you wanted to loosen the adhesions, but gently, gently, without forcing anything. Holly traced her fingertips along the cicatrices. She felt she knew him well enough by now to ask how he’d come by them.

“Knife fightin’,” he replied. “Never could handle lefties.”

Holly worked for twenty minutes, then took a seat on a barstool while Vincent opened the safe under the bar and took out a weighed, bagged eighth of an ounce of chronic-actually 3.5 grams, an eighth of a dealer’s ounce-then froze with his hand still under the bar.

“Good afternoon, Vincent, Miss Gold,” boomed a mahogany-skinned fat man wearing a dripping raincoat, as he turned sideways to fit through the narrow opening in the bamboo shutters.

“Good afternoon, Detective Hamilton,” said Holly and Vincent in unison. It had taken Holly a few months to understand the importance the islanders placed on the formal greeting; there were shopkeepers who to this day still gave her the stank-eye because she had inadvertently offended them.

Vincent brought his hand up empty from under the bar. Hamilton was one of his best clients, but in his profession one could never be too discreet. “And what can I do for you on this sorry day?”

“Not a sorry day at all, mon,” said Hamilton, taking off his poncho and draping it over an empty barstool. “It’s a day of jubilation, or ain’ ya hear?”

“Hear what?”

“De Machete Mon, me son-he done chop off de las’ han’ he gahn ta chop on dis’ eart’.”

“You got him!” cried Holly.

“His las’ victim got ’im. Whore from Montserrat, name’ Angela. Shot he aftah he chop she han’. Gyirl foun’ dem in de lime grove, boat togeddah, boat dead.”

“Dis calls for a celebration-on de house.” Vincent reached for the bottle of St. Luke Reserve under the bar, set up three shot glasses, filled the first two, glanced questioningly at Holly. She shook her head. Hamilton winked a bloodshot eye at her and told her she was going to need that drink when she found out who the Machete Man was.

“Who?”

“Your neighbor-St. Vincent mon.”

“Ruford Shea?” Holly was rocked, all right, though not enough to blow ten years of sobriety (at least as far as alcohol was concerned). “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it.” Hamilton knocked back his drink.

“But Ruford wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Dot’s because flies ain’ got no han’ ta chop.” Hamilton chortled at his own joke, then turned one-drink serious. “Take it from de seniormos’ detective on St. Luke,” he told her. “De Machete Mon and Ruford Shea be one and de same, and dey boat be deadahs now.”

His real name was Bob Piersson. Like Lewis, he was the scion of one of the original Twelve Danish Families. They’d started calling him Bungalow Bill, for the bloodthirsty young tiger hunter in the song on the Beatles’ white album, when he returned from ’Nam in ’71 with the well-known thousand-yard stare.