Elmore Leonard: Djibouti

Ubu stood on deck looking toward the LNG tanker, more than a mile to port now, Jama waiting for him to see the gun pointing at him.

"I'm taking the boat," Jama said, "but I don't need a deckhand. Nothing for you to do."

Ubu turned as Jama began talking and now had his eyes fixed on the gun, Jama thinking he'd start pleading for his life. No, he held on, this boy learning English, pushing his glasses up on his nose. He said, "I don't know why you want to shoot me. I don't do nothing to you. Are you a robber? Take the boat. There is nothing the company would expect me to do about it."

"You're doing good," Jama said. "Standing up 'stead of crawling on the deck to kiss my shoes, these Adidas given to me by a buddy of mine." He said, "You want to get off the boat, go ahead."

Ubu Kalid looked at the sea lying almost still in the fierce glare of the sun, and looked at Jama.

"I don't know how to swim."

"You don't have to, you float ashore on the tide."

"I don't know how to float."

"Lay your head back and relax your body," Jama said. "I never told you my name, did I?"

"Yes, Mr. Jama Raisuli."

"That's what I been going by. My real name's James Russell."

"Russell," Ubu said, "that's a good fucking name."

Jama pushed him over the side. He watched him fighting the water and yelled at him, "Be cool, Ubu. Take it easy." He saw the boy looking up at him, eyes staring in his glasses, trying to calm himself now, Jama realizing, Shit, he'll never sink wearing the life jacket. He put the Walther on the jacket, right below the kid's face, and shot him twice.

He'd use the boat hook to pull him alongside. Get the jacket and the four bills he'd paid him. HE HAD TO SHOOT him. Couldn't let him drift off. He wanted to say something like, Don't take this personally. You're a witness, that's all. It had nothing to do with the kid knowing his real name. Then why'd you tell him? He thought the kid ought to change his. Ubu. That wasn't a name for a man spoke pretty good English. Why'd you tell him? Jama told himself. Because he knew he'd have to shoot Ubu and wanted to have a good reason. Man, everybody knew his name by now. He'd have to change it. Get it done while he was still in Djibouti, passport with a different name, like Hunter. He knew of people in town forged things like that.

Find Dara next. Settle with her.

After. Once he blew the ship. He was here to blow it and he would. Said, You can write that down, to himself. See to Dara after. He didn't know yet how he'd find her but he would. Right now he was heading the Buster toward that big hump of coral sticking up out of the gulf, the main Moucha, the daddy. HE'D BROUGHT BANANAS AND a sack of dates, a gallon jug of water, cheese, pita bread and a fresh bunch of khat he chewed to stir up scenes of Celeste loving him all over his body. He fell asleep and opened his eyes to sunlight. But by the time he'd eaten the same things for breakfast-dates, he'd never had one before he was over here-clouds were coming in low, streaks of clouds, parts of them gray. He wanted to look around, see where he was.

Buster was tied to a branch in a cove full of mangrove on the south side of Big Moucha. He'd seen outboards along the beach, people standing in water up to their ankles. Jama pulled the dinghy off Buster and paddled through an aisle in the mangrove that took him to a strip of beach and a view of the other side: a row of cabanas on the beach, people sitting under thatched palm umbrellas, looking at the sky. He knew this Moucha was popular with scuba divers. Get in the water and mess with reef sharks and manta rays. There was a gang of dive boats, tarps shading the decks and dive platforms on the stern, the ones on deck looking down through clear water, Jama believed, at divers fucking with the fish. Now he watched a girl step off the platform and thought if he was a shark, man, he'd nip off her rack for appetizers. He could hear their voices, words coming in French and some English, now they were laughing. Jama wondered for four seconds could he make up a story and join them, How y'all doin?

And one turns out to be a scuba-lovin cop never forgets a face from a poster.

Best follow this beach around and look for the highest part of the island. Least thirty feet off the sea. Then go on back to Buster. Chew some khat and see if he could get Dara to show some life. He'd sleep till it started to get dark.

What woke him up at four thirty in the afternoon, got him standing to look out past the mangrove, was the sound of a big outboard coming this way.

XAVIER REMEMBERED DONZIS FROM offshore powerboat racing. Cowes to Torquay along the south coast of England. He saw a race one time waiting on a ship. The Donzi Billy got hold of was different than the racing Donzis, this one an open-cockpit twenty-six-foot speedboat with two big Mercury outboards turning out 225 horsepower each. It reared up and flew when Billy let it out; Billy and Helene at the controls behind the high windscreen; Dara and Xavier in the bow with their camera.

Dara felt the trip starting out like a midweek excursion. Helene brought a hamper of hotel appetizers, dozens of oysters on ice, fruit and cheese, pastries-napoleons, Billy's favorite-Cokes and a half-dozen bottles of champagne. A snack, for the few hours they'd be on Ile Moucha.

Billy heading them out of Djibouti straight for the island's southeast corner, Pointe Noire, the Aphrodite at anchor less than five miles from the island. Billy said, "Muff, why don't we break out a bottle for the trip, drink a toast to our destiny."

Dara and Xavier gave each other a look but kept quiet.

Once they were in sight of the island Billy said, "What you see is a big pile of coral less than two miles wide but with a weird shape to it. Picture a wolverine in profile biting a seal standing straight up, in the crotch."

Helene said, "A wolverine…?"

"That's the shape of Big Moucha I see on my map," Billy said. "Bends around on itself with a bay taking up the center of the island." Billy said, "Muff, let me have that one for the cockpit and open another bottle for all hands, the drinking lamp is on." He swigged from the bottle and said, "Any green you see is mostly mangrove. Xavier, you know what those stunted trees are?"

Xavier said, "I believe they bushes tryin to act like trees."

"We're advised to bring our own water," Billy said. "Tourists pay forty-five bucks to come out here and sit under a thatched umbrella, have a few drinks and fall asleep. They wake up and go back to Djib." Billy raised his glasses to scope the beach. "Not many out today, or they've gone home. Army people come out and stay forty-eight hours."

Xavier said to Dara, "The man could be a tour guide."

"Talkative," Dara said. "On his second bottle already." THEY CIRCLED BIG MOUCHA to see what it was all about, up the east side and around north to Pointe du Scorpion, Billy reading from his map, Xavier shooting landscapes and thatched umbrellas along the beach. They passed the mouth of a bay to Plateau du Grand Signal and around to the south side of the island, not much to see but a few cabanas, until they approached a cove full of mangrove, the big Mercury outboards rumbling on low power.

Something white caught Dara's eye and she said, "Billy, stop," Dara standing now in the bow, her hand on Xavier's shoulder.

Billy said, "You want me to come about?"

"I swear I just saw the Buster," Dara looking back toward the cove.

Billy raised his voice circling out to come around, saying, "I imagine you'd know her after a month aboard. But there a bunch of those little trawlers come out of Djib."

"White with orange trim," Xavier said. "It sure looks like her." Xavier was shooting the boat now, tucked in among the mangrove.

"This is the closest I can get," Billy said. "You want to get out and look at her?"