February Heat. Wilson Roberts
ran his finger along the barrel of his thirty-eight. “Hell, let’s take them all.
Liz shook her head, running her hands through her hair. “I’ve never shot a gun.”
“Start,” Chance said, throwing a sawed-off at her. “Great gun. You just point it at someone at close range. Bang. Poof. Badguyburger.”
“You talk pretty mean for a man who only plinks at beer cans,” I said.
“I read a lot.”
He does. Chance could offer a course in American Popular Literature. He could do a great job of teaching Comparative Light Literature. He’s equally at home with the beach novels of Europe, Latin America, the U.S. and Canada. In translation, of course. The problem is he’d clutter his students’ minds with literary theory, like the crapola about Huck and Jim and Batman and Robin.
“I suppose you’ve got ammunition,” I said.
He rooted through the gun stash, pulling out six large plastic food storage bags, each double twist tied. Four were filled with shotgun shells, one had a dozen or more fifty shot boxes of twenty- two long rifle hollow points, the other contained several dozen thirty-eight slugs.
“It’s been around a while,” he said, opening a shotgun shell. “Dry as a bone.”
We took all the guns out and put them on top of the mattress. We cleaned and oiled each one and packed the guns and ammunition in a canvas duffle bag, and took the dinghy back to the dock. We tied up and were walking toward the Gurgel when L. Arthur Parker, Prime Minister of St. Ursula, crossed the road from Central Plaza.
“Good morning Fran,” he said, dropping the k from my name as he often does to annoy me. “And Chance, my friend, how are you?” He bowed slightly to Liz, mostly in a rather obvious attempt at sizing up her body.
Although Parker and Chance were in business together some years before, back in the days when The Maybelline had a working engine, L. Arthur Parker has never known whether Chance was a first or last name. Chance has always said L. Arthur would deport him for that alone, were it not for their old business connections.
“Good morning Mr. Prime Minister.” I don’t quibble with him over his mispronunciation of my name. Chance says I don’t even get The Edge with Parker. With good reason. He could get me deported for having too much gray in my beard. Civil rights for non-citizens on St. Ursula is not one of the Government’s high priority items. Besides, he does it on purpose, demonstrainge my insignificance in his world.
The Prime Minister was wearing a pastel pink guayaberra shirt, its square cut bottom hanging over beige polyester pants. A pair of open toed sandals completed the outfit. A thick black mustache almost obscured his upper lip. Setting his attaché case on the pavement he stood more erectly than usual, trying to equal Chance’s height. He almost succeeded.
“Who is your lovely friend, Fran?”
“Forgive my rudeness,” I said. “Mr. Prime Minister. Elizabeth Ford, Ms. Ford, the Honorable L. Arthur Parker, Prime Minister of the Independent British Island of St. Ursula.”
“Charmed, Ms. Ford.” L. Arthur Parker gave her another slight bow and pressed the back of her hand to his lips, gently kissing her fingertips.
He had her. Guys like him always do. I’ll never understand it. The strongest, most independent, most autonomous woman in the world can act like a jackass for a guaranteed eight and a half seconds after having her hand kissed by someone who bows slightly at the waist. Thirteen seconds if the guy is a Prime Minister.
L. Arthur Parker happens to be a slick Prime Minister. He is slender and tall with deep brown eyes flashing with articulate intelligence. Educated in anthropology, languages and mathematics at Cambridge he has doctorates in both anthropology and medicine from Harvard. He had been working on a post-doctoral fellowship at Berkeley, studying social factors in disease, when his father died and he came home to oversee the family investments, which included extensive real estate holdings throughout the Caribbean and a small private mental hospital on St. Ursula where the emotional and addictive problems of the very wealthy are treated with extreme privacy and comfort. He ran for the Legislature after a couple of years and is now in his third term as Prime Minister.
Shortly after his return he married Vivian Bothwell. Ronald Bothwell, her father had been the British governor here in the mid-Sixties. He retired from the Foreign Service to a house he built on The Knob at East End, overlooking Deadman Beach, next to Parker’s palatial home.
L. Arthur is an operator, but he isn’t a bad Prime Minister. The roads are in good repair and, with few exceptions, all paved. The potholes I had been dodging lately were the results of unusually heavy winter rains, and already many had been filled. Garbage is picked up daily. The island has full employment, and a well managed program of social services, most of them paid for by taxes and fees collected from tourists, especially those who keep their expensive boats registered in Ursuline waters.
“I certainly hope you will allow Mrs. Parker and me to entertain you and Ms Ford at dinner in a week or so.”
“Mr. Prime Minister, we’d be honored,” I said.
“Wonderful.” He pulled an appointment calendar from his back pocket. Shaking his head, clucking his tongue, he said, “It’s distressing how busy things get. Would Tuesday the twenty-eighth be all right?”
“Perfect,” I said, shaking his hand. He kissed Liz’s fingertips for a second time, picked up his attaché case and crossed back to Central Plaza, where he had a corner suite of offices in the third floor of the gold domed Government House his administration had just completed building. It was by law the tallest structure on the island, three stories with a one story cross at the top. The Prime Minister’s personal office overlooked the entire government square and its adjacent harbor.
“I won’t be able to have dinner with him on the twenty- eighth,” Liz said.
“Maybe. Then again, this whole thing, whatever it is, could be over by then, and you’ll be down here for a relaxing vacation, lolling on the beach with me, doing all the restaurants and bars. That’s going to be my fee for all this, you know.”
“Fee? I never thought of a fee.” She laughed as she said it.
I stroked my beard. “Private investigating isn’t cheap, you know. At the least I expect you to come back down here and stay at my place while we paint the island red.”
“You’re a nice man, Frank, but I’ll pay your fee in cash, as soon as I can afford it.”
The tension in her voice, the set of her jaw prompted me to drop it. My own tension level was high enough. I didn’t like any of this, but I was growing to like who I was getting into it with. Keeping my mouth shut was the best move I could think of right then. We loaded the duffle bag in the back seat of the Gurgel with her and drove off.
Ten minutes later we pulled into my driveway. It was pouring rain. Splashing through flooded potholes, the three of us soaked to the skin, wet clothes and hair clinging to us, we bellowed out the theme song to Gilligan’s Island in three-part harmony, two madmen and a madwoman screaming musical defiance at absurdity and violence.
Halfway down the drive we stopped.
Rumble’s head was impaled on a bamboo pole stuck into a mud puddle in the lane, his tongue sticking out, his upper lip curled back in a snarl.
The body was hanging neck down from a rope tied around the rear legs, anchored to a nail above my front door, a pool of blood already caking beneath it. Flies were buzzing. Chance and Liz stood behind me. They were quiet, but I could hear their shaken breathing.
Turning away, I sat on the steps of the verandah, my head buried in my hands as I wept for the little dog I had raised from a puppy, and had fought as bitter a custody battle for as most people do over children in their divorces.
In both my Springfield apartment and on St. Ursula, Rumble had been my closest companion, running, often hopping after me on his