Elmore Leonard - Djibouti

He watched Dara staring at the house where five men were found shot to death, one bullet each. Xavier said, "You want to find the boy playin he's more African than American, huh? Wouldn't mind runnin into him."

"I'll bet we could," Dara said.

"Labor Day one time," Xavier said, "I was in Atlantic City and called a girl I know lived there with her sister. The sister tells me, oh, she's gone to play the slot machines. I stepped out on the Boardwalk and five minutes later who do I see coming toward me in the Labor Day crowd of people? LaDonna. The girl lit up, she's so glad to see me back from seafarin. She'd just won seventeen hundred dollars playin a quarter machine and we celebrated it together. LaDonna always liked me."

"Don't tell me," Dara said, "you expected to run into her."

"I didn't expect not to," Xavier said. "I always keep it open. It happens, it happens. When it don't, what are you out? It's best never be anxious."

Dara took his arm and they walked away from the house.

She said, "All right, I'll leave it up to you. We keep at it or quit and go home."

"Just a minute ago you talkin about makin a feature with Naomi Watts. All we need to know is what happens next. Now you just as soon go home?"

Dara said, "I think we'd have a better chance of finding the Gold Dust Twins than Jama. Now he's free he's gonna hide out or change his looks."

"They still hijackin ships," Xavier said. "The world navies not shuttin 'em down any."

They came to the white rental car. He opened the door for her, walked around and got in.

"The latest hijack," Xavier said, "they want a million for a Finnish ship, the Arctic Sea, with fifteen Russian crewmen on board. Flies a Maltese flag. They think it might have a 'secret cargo' they callin it. They tested it in Finland for nuclear shit aboard and musta scored positive. But now the ship's gone and disappeared."

Dara said, "Where was it last seen?"

"In the English Channel, two weeks ago."

"It's not around here?" Dara surprised.

"In the channel on its way to Algeria, but never arrived. You want to know more," Xavier said, "you have to call Billy. I bet he can tell where the ship's at."

Dara said, "I keep thinking about Jama. He could still be around here."

"But the Twins'll be easier to locate," Xavier said. "Give Idris a call. Find out what they're up to. Talk to Harry. Ask him how come he blew his big chance."

"If he wasn't at the house," Dara said, "he'll blame Idris."

"You think they know what they doin?"

"I think they have no idea," Dara said.

THEY MET AT THE Club ZuZu and before long the young gentleman named Hunter was telling Jama where he lived.

"In a residential hotel on rue de Marseille. Sort of an upscale Frenchified joint done in Gallic moderne. My digs are on the top floor. A stairway takes one to the roof-it's quite nice-with a French-blue awning that rolls out to shade the deck, or rolls back to reveal as much sun as you'd ever want. Widows, I suppose well off enough, have suites there, but never venture topside."

The next afternoon they were on the roof, several floors above the surroundings, Jama lying naked. Hunter said, "I'm surprised you have tan lines."

Jama said, "You never kept house with a black man before?"

"Keeping house," Hunter said, "that's what we're doing?"

"Giving shelter to a seaman down on his luck. Hit over the head by a man stepped out of an alley. Robbed while I'm lying dazed and my ship is gone without me," Jama said, his black snake exposed for Hunter to admire.

"You want to touch it, don't you?"

Hunter said, "You mind?" HE WAS TWENTY-FIVE, AN American in this god-awful place to learn the shipping business. "I sit before a computer all day looking at figures and schedules. I'd rather be scraping hulls." He said, "I'm kidding. I'm bored. Maybe I should go to sea. Is it fun?"

Hunter was from New York, the grandson of a man who owned and ran a half-dozen shipping terminals, "practically with a whip," Hunter said. "Dad slipped away ages ago to sell debentures, and my dear mother, who swears she loves me more than her clothes, offered me up to her father, a dedicated scoundrel."

Another night at ZuZu's, Hunter watching the sailors on the dance floor, Jama's eyes on the slim chicks rolling their asses to the music, he said to Hunter, "When I missed my ship and got waylaid, I was following a boy down the alley."

Hunter said, "A boy?"

"A young man like yourself. And I've been punished for it, losing my ship and getting in trouble."

Hunter took Jama's hand, a candle burning between them on the table at ZuZu's, Hunter telling him, "No, you haven't, you've found what you're looking for," and Jama saw his luck turning.

The third day with Hunter, Jama telling him sea stories about incredibly ugly men finding each other and getting it on. "I saw two miserable dogs, both desperately in need of basic hygiene, kissing each other on the mouth. I did, one night when I walked in the head, I see these two hounds in each other's arms."

Hunter said, "Awww, the poor guys."

"Their grubby look reminded me, I'm shaving off my beard today."

"No! I love your beard."

"It smells old."

"It does not."

"I'm letting you shave it off," Jama said, "since you have a tender feeling for it. Use your scissors to cut it down to where you can use your straightedge to finish."

He seemed to like it, running his fingers through Jama's beard as he snipped, his eyes moist, sniffling at first. Jesus. Never said a word. Lathered Jama's face and became intent on shaving it clean. Hunter grinning by then, touching his work, surprising himself as he said, "Why, Mr. Bushy, you're more beautiful without it."

Jama said, "Is that right?" looking at himself in the mirror.

Hunter started on his hair with a comb and scissors till Jama told him he didn't need the comb. "Get to it, cut it down." There was no way to hurry him. Finally, turning his head from side to side in the mirror, Jama said, "Hunter, my boy, you did it."

Jama sat on a high stool in the bathroom, naked. Hunter stood between his legs, taller, head raised just a bit, still fooling with Jama's hair. Hunter said, "Hand me the scissors, the comb too, please, if you don't mind." He said, "Have you ever been referred to as a chic sheikh?" His head still raised.

Jama picked up the straightedge from the counter and sliced the blade across Hunter's throat.

He saw Hunter's eyes taking on a dreamy look, and brought him against his chest to bleed on him, wondering at what moment Hunter would know he was dead and Jama could let the boy slide down his body to the tiles. He'd take a shower and then look through Hunter's closet. Find something casual to wear, something maybe collegiate. He thought of Hunter looking even younger in his T-shirt and jeans and decided it was the way to go. Become Jama the college boy.

Or maybe James Russell, from Brown.

Wear this brown T-shirt with BROWN on the front of it big, in white. Coming out of the drawer it became BROWN UNIVERSITY with a coat of arms between the names, some red in it.

Jama slipped it over his head and looked in the mirror to see brown on brown, the shirt darker than his bare arms. The size an extra-large that hung straight on him to cover his biceps and flat stomach. He'd be lying naked on the bed and Hunter would pretend to play his ribs, saying if he could plug Jama in he could play him like an instrument. Jama told him he wanted to play music there was an instrument standing right next to him. They did a lot of that kind of shit, saying cute things to each other. This boy, a graduate of Brown University, would use words Jama had never heard people say, like sardonic and saturnine, and he'd have to look them up. He thought of a saturnine person as mostly cool. Hunter's style was acting like a child, begging Jama to tell him his real name and wanting to know why he'd changed it. All the time asking things like that. He said to Jama, "To be intimate is to know each other's secrets." He said, "God, to be the only person in the entire world to know your mysterious past."