mark you now so that they will recognize you. Turn your left palm upwards, please.”
“I can’t…please…the tape is too tight.”
“Here, let me help you.”
Rodrigo slashed the tape that bound Gomez’s wrist, flipped his hand over, and crushed his left wrist to the arm of the chair.
“Hey, you can’t—”
Rodrigo looked into Gomez’s face with his two colorless eyes as he slashed the sailor’s palm with the scissors blade. Gomez saw all the bright red blood spattering this guy Rodrigo’s white linen suit, and the lights went out again.
For a while, Gomez thought the angry red letters carved into his hand were WW. After a couple of days, he realized maybe he was looking at the letters upside down.
Maybe it was MM instead of WW .
Mickey Mouse? Marilyn Monroe?
The Mao-Mao Club?
Yeah.
Maybe it meant he was a member.
4
The Staniel Cay Yacht Club baked beneath a torpid afternoon sun. The old haunt had been built in the late forties, sometime just after the war and prior to the time in the fifties when, in Hawke’s view anyway, a vast majority of the world’s architects had gone completely off the rails.
The pink-hued British Colonial–style clubhouse had the faded façade and the boozy, sunburnt charm of a timeworn playboy. Little of the former glamour remained but, underneath it all, Hawke saw as he strode toward it down the long dock, good bones.
Still, to call it a yacht club was stretching things a bit.
Yachts? Certainly a few serious sport-fishing boats showed up from time to time, especially when the marlin were running. Most of the time, however, there were just small fishing gigs and dories bobbing in the clear blue waters around the docks.
It was a club only in that its membership shared a common partiality to lethal rum beverages, ice-cold Kalik beer, and fishing lies of an order of magnitude seldom found outside these parts of the Caribbean. The “president” of the club was whoever was sober enough to remain standing when the bar closed.
The faded club rules, mimeographed and tacked above the bar, stated that it was absolutely forbidden to sleep on the horseshoe bar. Still, in the very early morning, it was not uncommon to find a few members dozing peacefully atop it.
Suffice it to say, one didn’t stroll through these aged portals expecting limbo nights, cocktails with tiny umbrellas, or the quaint melody of “Yellowbird” wafting through the palms. Perhaps the club had seen better days. Perhaps, worse.
The music on the club’s PA system consisted of either reggae in the evenings, or, as now, scratchy recordings of early American bluesmen such as Son House or Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Amen Lillywhite, the club’s chief bartender, was all smiles when Hawke and Congreve walked in. He was an ancient blackbird of a man, tall and bare-chested with golden hoop earrings. His enormous white grin and a necklace of shark’s teeth had been a primary attraction at the club since the night it opened.
“Welcome, welcome, gentlemen!” he boomed. “What can I get for you two young fellows?”
“Two ice-cold beers would be lovely,” Congreve said.
News both good and bad traveled fast in Staniel Cay. Amen, presiding at his horseshoe bar, was at the very epicenter of information flow on the small island. News of the launch moored at the end of the dock reached his ears seconds after its arrival. His excitement grew when he learned the name Blackhawke was scribed in gold leaf on the launch’s transom. The famous yacht had arrived almost a week earlier, mooring in the deeper water offshore. This was the first time her launch had ventured into Staniel Cay.
It was dark and cool inside the bar where Hawke and Congreve stood waiting for the Russians. The two agents had finally arrived, but remained out on the docks, having a frightful row. Meanwhile, the two Englishmen, each sipping from a cold bottle of Kalik, were gazing up at a wall covered with faded snapshots, a kaleidoscopic jumble of
“I can’t…please…the tape is too tight.”
“Here, let me help you.”
Rodrigo slashed the tape that bound Gomez’s wrist, flipped his hand over, and crushed his left wrist to the arm of the chair.
“Hey, you can’t—”
Rodrigo looked into Gomez’s face with his two colorless eyes as he slashed the sailor’s palm with the scissors blade. Gomez saw all the bright red blood spattering this guy Rodrigo’s white linen suit, and the lights went out again.
For a while, Gomez thought the angry red letters carved into his hand were WW. After a couple of days, he realized maybe he was looking at the letters upside down.
Maybe it was MM instead of WW .
Mickey Mouse? Marilyn Monroe?
The Mao-Mao Club?
Yeah.
Maybe it meant he was a member.
4
The Staniel Cay Yacht Club baked beneath a torpid afternoon sun. The old haunt had been built in the late forties, sometime just after the war and prior to the time in the fifties when, in Hawke’s view anyway, a vast majority of the world’s architects had gone completely off the rails.
The pink-hued British Colonial–style clubhouse had the faded façade and the boozy, sunburnt charm of a timeworn playboy. Little of the former glamour remained but, underneath it all, Hawke saw as he strode toward it down the long dock, good bones.
Still, to call it a yacht club was stretching things a bit.
Yachts? Certainly a few serious sport-fishing boats showed up from time to time, especially when the marlin were running. Most of the time, however, there were just small fishing gigs and dories bobbing in the clear blue waters around the docks.
It was a club only in that its membership shared a common partiality to lethal rum beverages, ice-cold Kalik beer, and fishing lies of an order of magnitude seldom found outside these parts of the Caribbean. The “president” of the club was whoever was sober enough to remain standing when the bar closed.
The faded club rules, mimeographed and tacked above the bar, stated that it was absolutely forbidden to sleep on the horseshoe bar. Still, in the very early morning, it was not uncommon to find a few members dozing peacefully atop it.
Suffice it to say, one didn’t stroll through these aged portals expecting limbo nights, cocktails with tiny umbrellas, or the quaint melody of “Yellowbird” wafting through the palms. Perhaps the club had seen better days. Perhaps, worse.
The music on the club’s PA system consisted of either reggae in the evenings, or, as now, scratchy recordings of early American bluesmen such as Son House or Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Amen Lillywhite, the club’s chief bartender, was all smiles when Hawke and Congreve walked in. He was an ancient blackbird of a man, tall and bare-chested with golden hoop earrings. His enormous white grin and a necklace of shark’s teeth had been a primary attraction at the club since the night it opened.
“Welcome, welcome, gentlemen!” he boomed. “What can I get for you two young fellows?”
“Two ice-cold beers would be lovely,” Congreve said.
News both good and bad traveled fast in Staniel Cay. Amen, presiding at his horseshoe bar, was at the very epicenter of information flow on the small island. News of the launch moored at the end of the dock reached his ears seconds after its arrival. His excitement grew when he learned the name Blackhawke was scribed in gold leaf on the launch’s transom. The famous yacht had arrived almost a week earlier, mooring in the deeper water offshore. This was the first time her launch had ventured into Staniel Cay.
It was dark and cool inside the bar where Hawke and Congreve stood waiting for the Russians. The two agents had finally arrived, but remained out on the docks, having a frightful row. Meanwhile, the two Englishmen, each sipping from a cold bottle of Kalik, were gazing up at a wall covered with faded snapshots, a kaleidoscopic jumble of
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