Elmore Leonard: Djibouti

Dara thought about it and shook her head. "I was surprised, that's all. It could be the Buster, but so what. It's somebody scuba diving."

Xavier said, "In a mangrove swamp?" JAMA'S SISTER TOLD HIM when she was a little girl, a good ten years before she turned to prostitution, "You pray for what you want, and if God likes the idea of you havin it, he gives it to you." He remembered thinking it might be true. The thing was, Jama never prayed for anything and always got what he wanted.

It was Dara standing up in that speedboat, wasn't it? See, he didn't have to pray to find her again. There she was.

He said to his sister that time when she was a child, "If God knows everything, what's he do when you pray for something, have to change his mind sometimes?"

His sister said, "God knows everything all at the same time. Knows you gonna pray and knows if you getting it or not. But when you pray and you get it, it makes you feel good, God wanting you to have it from the beginning of eternity." His little sister who turned to hookin.

He believed she was right. Jama got everything he wanted and thanked Allah for it after. Least most of the time.

There was Dara out cruising.

He'd bet money they saw the boat and recognized it. They might even've caught a glimpse of him in the wheelhouse. If any of them did, it would be Dara. He believed they both wouldn't mind getting next to each other for a time. Right now he'd best take his gear and the rubber boat and go someplace else. THEY WERE STILL IN the Donzi, sucking oysters off the half shells now, Billy swigging champagne from the bottle, Dara having a Coke. Xavier helped himself to the champagne, have a glass or two.

Billy said, "I'm not going near the target till I'm ready. Sneak up with the wind behind us-what there is of it-and put a round each into her five tanks. In other words I'm gonna shoot the ship." He gave his crew time to grin or say something. No one did. Billy said he would put hot rounds in her from close on a thousand yards. Get the gas seeping out to thaw in pools. In a few minutes there'd be the biggest fireball ever seen by man. He raised his bottle of champagne and took a good swig.

Helene said, "Hon, I think our guests would like some too."

"I'm sharing with my man Xavier," sounding offended. "Muff, you know I'm a dead shot, even with a glow on." He said, "Aren't I?"

Helene hesitated but said, "You sure are, Skip."

Billy went back to sit low in the cockpit and Dara said to Xavier, "You haven't said anything funny since we got here."

Xavier said, "Billy looked at me, gave me time to ask him, 'You say shoot the ship or shoot the shit?'"

"But you didn't."

"I don't need a straight man. What I been wonderin is how I feel about bein here."

"You don't see it as a big finish?"

"What of?"

"My documentary. I'm starting to get ideas."

"You don't see any holes?"

"This setting," Dara said, "it's a world where we fill holes with cuts to the Central Market, the mosque, women peeking out of their burkas, and see if we can build tension. If the explosion comes off anywhere close to Billy's description, we'll have a hot property."

Xavier sat there not saying anything, and Dara said, "What are you thinking?"

"What you're makin of all this. Wonderin could Jama be here with the same idea as Billy."

Dara said, "I'm wondering how he meant to blow it up."

"I thought about it for a while," Xavier said, "but the man's on the dodge. How's he gonna work it?"

"He's still al Qaeda," Dara said. "What else was he doing on the ship?"

Billy stepped into the bow to tell them, "Minutes after I fire, we could have gunboats chasing our wake. What I'm hoping, everybody's off the ship before it turns into a ball of fire. If the gunboats don't know that, they could start looking for survivors, people in the water."

Xavier said, "Or the vapor catches fire and runs off the gunboats." He said, "I'm goin ashore, maybe look up anybody still around."

Dara said, "You're gonna check out the Buster, aren't you?"

Xavier said, "I'll let you know if it's ours." BILLY WAS IN THE cockpit on the phone talking to Buck Bethards, telling him what they were up to.

Dara in the bow said to Helene, "Why doesn't he go shoot the fucking ship and quit talking about it?" She was having a glass of champagne, promising herself just one.

"He doesn't think it's dark enough yet." Helene lowered her voice to say, "Listen, I hate to tell you but he isn't a deadeye when he's ripped. I worked up my nerve and told him he can't hit shit and he knows it. Billy goes, 'If I can't hit a tanker a thousand feet long with my eyes closed…' He had to stop to think of something. I said, 'Well, if you can't, you gonna quit drinking or shooting?'"

Billy's voice came from the cockpit to tell them, "He hasn't located the guy yet, but he's onto a lead looks good."

"He's got Buck trying to find Jama," Helene said. "Billy thinks it's funny, his ace gets popped by the guy he's looking for."

Dara said, "If Billy's not sober enough to shoot, I mean at the gas ship-"

"I don't know if he wants to now," Helene said. "He'll change his mind, but doesn't want to look like a wimp and it's too late to get out of it. Billy and his big mouth. He's even told me, like during tender moments while we're doing it? He says sometimes he talks too much. I want to tell him, 'Jesus, will you shut up?'"

"Let's see what happens," Dara said. XAVIER FOLLOWED THE BEACH hiking over coral north but mostly west to the cove they'd seen earlier in the Donzi. He crossed the cove's entrance, water to his waist, worked his way in and there was Buster in the mangrove, knowing it was his and Dara's Buster once he got close enough to see marks he recognized on the gunnel, the wheelhouse glass discolored, turning yellow. He could tell Dara believed it was the Buster the way her hand had gripped his shoulder. It was all right, she had no reason to visit the boat. But he did.

Xavier wanting to look for something he forgot, might still be aboard in a drawer.

He stepped up on the deck, ducked into the wheelhouse and stood looking down the ladder. He raised his voice to ask, "Anybody home?" Waited and said, "Permission to come aboard? This Buster is an old friend of mine."

No sound came from below.

Xavier took his time on the few steps of the ladder, ducking his head, then raising it to see all the way to the mattress in the bow, no one aboard. Buster didn't look like she'd been cleaned. Xavier said, "Well, let's see if it's here." Something he thought he'd packed but wasn't in his bag at the hotel: literature about Dara and her movies he'd kept right here in a drawer. Opened the drawer and saw pages of Dara's notes, changes she wished she'd made in pictures released years go. Dara looking back when she made those notes. Looking ahead now to make something of these bad boys she'd met.

The literature, a publicity folder with her pictures, wasn't in the drawer. He knew he'd put it there and if the boat hadn't been cleaned, who took it? Djibouti Marine people?

He turned to leave thinking of good times aboard, a month of leading up to their getting to it. He'd experience a feeling for when it was time to become intimate again. Wait for Dara, movie scenes on her mind, to show signs of turning horny. He saw the life jacket on a seat and a box of some groceries on the table. He pulled the seat out and saw two holes in the jacket and bloodstains. Blood all over the inside of the jacket.

Where was the one brought the groceries?

Where was the rubber dinghy? FROM ACROSS THE COVE in cover, Jama watched Xavier board the trawler and come out after a while and stand on the deck looking around, holding the life jacket Ubu had been wearing.

Man, you plan your moves and somebody comes along to fuck you up. He hadn't seen the life jacket as a problem. Or Ubu. They'd fish him out of the water one of these days…Yeah? What did Ubu or the life jacket have to do with him?