Elmore Leonard - Djibouti

Dara said, "I hear khat is big in San Diego, all the Somalis living there. But why San Diego?"

"See if they any retired pirates there. Now we comin to the Central Market, biggest one in town, the mosque standin over it. Rows and rows of stalls sellin shit-clothes, chickens, all kind of fruit and vegetables. Look at the outfits, the colors on the women. Lookit over here, the table of meat."

Dara was shooting it.

"It's moving."

"That's the flies on the piece of goat loin, all movin around to get a bite. Look at the girl there, holdin branches of leaves, cellophane around the bunch. She sellin khat. Only good two days so you keep it out of the air." Xavier reached over to touch Dara shooting the rows of stalls, the women sitting under umbrellas. "Look at those guys, the wads in their jaws. Suckin on khat, known as the flower of paradise. All day they be chewin and suckin. They fly it in from Ethiopia, deliver ten eleven tons of chew every morning. Keep the men happy."

"The women don't use it?"

"What they can sneak. You in the Muslim world. Women get seconds maybe."

"I got some of that in Bosnia," Dara said.

"Your best one. You know how to shoot women, get in their souls, how you do them. Hey, but you good with men, way you let 'em be theirselves thinkin they hot shit. Listen, you gonna get a chance tonight, see the bad boys up from Somalia in the big city."

"You're sure they come here?"

"Buy a suit of clothes…buy cars and they hardly have any roads down where they live. They come here lookin for French pussy and settle for Ethiopian chicks. They not bad, or the chicks down from Eritrea, they special, have that fine bone structure in their faces. You gonna see the bad boys out clubbin, the first time in their poor-ass lives in the big city cuttin up."

"How do you know they're pirates?"

"They tell you. Let the chicks know they loaded from hijackin ships, makin good pay from it. I talk to a party lady after the boys left or passed out, had some English. She say these Somali desert boys are more fun than the Frenchies. Love to get all the way drunk. And they rich, finally livin their lives."

Dara got out a cigarette and lighter from her shirt pocket, a faded blue work shirt loose and comfortable on her. She said, "They go out in skiffs, take down huge cargo ships and tankers, and make at least a million or so each time." She snapped her lighter but didn't hold the flame. "I wonder if they're getting help. Tipped off, told what ships look good, easy to board."

"They gone after a hundred or so and score forty-two times," Xavier said. "That's like battin over four hundred."

"Somebody," Dara said, "could be giving them information for a piece of the action."

"Who you think's doin it?"

She said, "Maybe we'll find out. I want to see my boat," and snapped the lighter again.

XAVIER POINTED TO THE commercial port off to the west, fuel tanks and cranes standing against a glare of sky. They were loading container ships from a framework of steel girders. Dara saw a cruise ship in port, a navy supply ship at anchor in the stream. Xavier said, "The warships must be out tryin to catch pirates. I told a sailor the other night, 'Go to the bars, man, the pirates all in there spendin the loot.'" Xavier drove out a road past land development and across a causeway to follow the pier straight out to a jog, the pier jutting out on an angle to become a wide concrete dock where pleasure boats took on fuel and provisions.

"You see it yet?"

"Not that sailboat."

They were approaching a motor-sailer tied up on their left. "That's Pegaso," Xavier said. "Sixty-two feet bow to stern, enclosed wheelhouse. She's made for comfort, but she'll move in a wind."

"What is it, a yawl?"

"A ketch. Like a yawl but with a big mizzen aft, stepped forward some. She'll raise four sheets of canvas in a friendly sea, jib to mizzen."

Dara saw a guy with a girl in a bikini on the stern, the man raising a glass to them as the Toyota rolled past. The girl's hair was red, kind of wild.

"The guy's takin his girl," Xavier said, waving to them, "on a trip round the world. Givin her the test. She don't complain or get seasick he'll think about marryin her."

"You're kidding. The girl agreed to it?"

"Guy's wealthy, has his rules."

"I don't believe it."

"They started out in Nice, a cold wind, a mistral, come blowin down from the Alps. He figured, she become seasick he'd drop her off in Monte Carlo, not have to take her all the way round the world. But she made that part of the trip fine. They come down through the Suez, the Red Sea, now they gettin ready for the Indian Ocean."

"He told you that?"

"The man's chatty. Said his boat will run you thirty-five thousand a foot you want one like it. Full of electronics and power, so he don't have to lift nothin."

"How does he make his money?"

"As I understand, it's in the family, goin way back. It don't sound like he works any."

"Not an overnight millionaire."

"The man likes to talk is all. You ask him about his boat, he tells you. They stayin at the Kempinski, Billy Wynn and Helene. He's close to fifty. I'd put Helene at twentysomethin."

"And a knockout."

"It's how she has the ticket to ride. I been runnin into them different places. Had drinks with Mr. Wynn at the hotel, loves champagne. He said call him Billy."

They were coming to their boat now at the end of the dock. "I told you a trawler," Xavier said. "This one all cleaned up and painted pure white with a pretty orange trim. Lookin gay don't mean she ain't seaworthy."

Xavier pulled up even with the trawler, Dara looking past him at the white hull, the orange trim along the gunnels and around the top of the wheelhouse. She said, "You're right, it's kind of cute, isn't it?"

They stepped aboard, moved from the deck to the wheelhouse to go below, from the galley to the head and a double mattress wedged into the bow. Behind her Xavier said, "That's yours. I got a nine-foot hammock gonna hang from the foremast to the wheelhouse, while you sweatin below."

"Or I put the mattress under the hammock and stare at your butt till I fall asleep."

"You can take the hammock you want," Xavier said.

"We'll work it out," Dara said. "We've got a fridge, a shower…kind of a bunk in the galley. We get aboard we'll find places that suit us. How much wine did you get?"

"Five cases of red we don't have to chill."

"What if we have company?"

"Muslims don't drink, but I'll get us another case."

"Store them in the head, we'll look like that German U-boat, Das Boot. This one have a name?"

"Buster."

"You're kidding."

"They call it Buster 30, goin by its length, but chubby. The tank's topped off. Saab marine diesel below, but only fifty-six horsepower at twenty-eight hundred rpms, and that's it. We gonna be out cruisin the gulf at six knots. The boat manager called this a power cruiser."

"How much?"

"Man said he wanted two thousand a week, eight for the month. I showed him your piece with the write-ups and pictures. This a Frenchman leases us the boat. I tell him ordinarily the transportation is loaned to us no charge, since we show his company name in the film. I tell him he can even be standin by the sign says DJIBOUTI MARINE DESIGNS-LUXURY ON THE WATER. I tell the man, 'But you not the Salvation Army, you in business, so I'm payin you,' and put a wad of forty hundred-dollar bills in his hand. Now he's holdin the money, can feel it. He says, 'All right.' Says, 'Okay. You come back here in four weeks.'"

Dara said, "I have to put him in the film?"

"The man's savin you four grand. Course you put him in the film."

She paused, in the galley again. "Who cooks?"

"I take the helm and keep track of where we at, you do the fish."