Chapter 2

When Pete returned aboard his ship that morning at nine o'clock the chief mate whistled at him from outside the wheel house of the bridge. Ebal Gregor was a squat burly Irishman of about Pete's age with a bad limp and a perpetually unlit pipe slanting out from a corner of his whiskered lips.

"What's the word, Captain?" he asked in his good-natured voice, clamping the pipe stem with his teeth. He came awkwardly down the port-side bridge ladder favoring his left leg, hands white-knuckled on the railings.

Pete met him by the open companionway to the officer quarters. "Yes, we have no bananas," he said to him. "Not for a few days yet. Hear from the Exchange?"

"Aye s'r," said Ebal, lifting his cap to scratch his balding head. "The O Line wants us in the Mediterranean to pick up the slack at Algiers. Figs and dates. More than the eye can see. The French liners can't handle it all, not with the stuffing they've got for the expeditionary forces. The brokers in Singapore have some tramps in route there, through the Suez, but not enough."

"It's this dry hot weather all over creation," Pete remarked indifferently. "Did the Baltic brokers have any news about the northern ports? Word is they'll be ice free all winter."

"Nothing today, but that's the forecast." Ebal pulled his cap down tight over his brow. "I told the broker that it could be a good thirty-forty days afore we'd reach Algiers."

"At best. They okay with it?"

"Not much choice. Not a lotta deadheading tramps available."

"Uh-huh. Any word from New York?"

Ebal shook his head. "Not from Carlos."

Pete nodded. "Seen Todd?"

"Aye s'r. Down in the galley last I seen, sleeping on his plate."

"Send a hand down to tell him I've news for him. I'll be in my cabin."

Ebal Gregor limped down the few steps to the cargo deck, out into a swath of shade cast by a wall of crates and shouted to a Jamaican crewman lounging under a boom arm. "Stevo! That hold cover ain't going nowhere. Get lively now. Go down to the seamen galley. Give the chief mechanic my compliments and say he's to get his ass up to the Captain's cabin. Got a word for 'im."

Pete went along the passage to the end door, bumped it open and tossed his cap onto the chintz armchair below the starboard porthole. His desk was cluttered with charts and ledgers, gleaming in the glow of the two stern windows behind it, its oval-backed mahogany chair looking back at him with its get-busy air. He frowned. Busy with what? It was a waiting game now.

The steward, Riley, had been in to change the bunk sheets. The one thin blanket was folded neatly under the pillow. There was the scent of magnolia drifting from the bureau at the foot of the bunk, compliments of the tea candle in its tiny tin saucer. The smell reminded Pete of Georgia. The state, not the girl. He went round to his desk and settled into the chair.

He was leafing through a calendar when a rapping came from the door.

"Come in, Todd," he said and flung the calendar aside.

Todd Brickly slipped through the narrow gap he had made between door edge and door frame. His grease-stained green overalls hung loosely on his angular body as if he was a coat hanger with braided ropes for arms and legs. His cap was worn far back on his head, hidden by spiky brown hair. He was a year or two past thirty, still with the coiled energy of youth but with the resigned cynicism of old age in his washed-out blue eyes.

There was a red spot above his right nostril.

"Is that blood or spaghetti sauce on your nose?"

Todd wiped his nose with the tip of a finger, puzzled at it, and wiped his finger on his pantsleg.

"This 'bout Georgia?" he asked eagerly, "or the coal run?" He stood wide-legged before the desk, bony hands on hips, leaning slightly forward, his tongue running to and fro over his upper lip.

"I think I saw your sister at the Seaside. Anyway it was a pretty strawberry-blond girl, eighteen or so. A cab took her to the boarding house on Shingle Street."

Todd made fists and shook them like mirambas. "The Swede's? Or Granny Apple's?" he asked with a sudden nervous suspicion.

"I didn't know there were two. She's at the Swede's."

"That's good. Granny's the whorehouse. Rents rooms."

Pete took out a pouch of Cuban tobacco flakes and a roll of yellow papers. "What's your plan? Gonna go see her?"

"You're damn right, captain."

"Suppose she tells you to go soak your head in a tidal pool." Pete started rolling a cig, looking up at Todd with a grin.

"Aw, I'll talk sense into her. She'll listen to me." He swung his arms back and forth, bobbing on his toes and smiling up at the deckbeams.

"Sure she will. That's why she ran away from school to be a gun moll."

Todd barked a harsh laugh. "Aw, that's just Pop spoutin' off his worse case scenario. She probably skipped with some Don Juan. I'll straighten things out."

Pete licked the flap of the cig and sealed it, twisting the ends. "Get the pressure gauge fixed all right?"

"I had Hartly do it. Watched him. A fast learner. Good kid. A mite bit scrappy, though."

"Nothing wrong with that. Riley says we're good on coal."

"Right. I'd like to shove off for the Swede's," Todd said, motionless now and solemn.

"Before dinner?" Pete lit up and leaned back in his chair. "Cookie's got a surprise for us."

"What, he catch an octopus?"

"We'll be having none of that shit again or I'll hang him from the boom."

Todd nodded, his mind elsewhere.

"Go see her whenever you like," Pete told him, his own mind wandering. "We won't be sailing for awhile yet."

Todd made a mock salute and spun round for the door.

"Send Buddy in, Todd, before you jump ship."

"That damn boson don't like me telling him anything," Todd complained bitterly, looking back with a hand on the latch.

"That's why I want to see him," Pete said. "If he gives you any lip, you've my permission to fatten it up for him."

Todd bared his canines in an eager grin. "Aye aye," he said and slipped out through the gap.

Pete sat listening. He heard distant sounds, identifying most of them and wondering about the ones that seemed to come from dreams. He rolled another cig, and lit it just as the door opened and Budwick stood in the doorway like a throwback to the troglodytes.

"Toss my cap over and have a seat," Pete said, gesturing at the chintz armchair.

Budwick moved slowly, always, unless the circumstances dictated otherwise. He was big in a smooth muscled way, well covered with fat but not in any way flabby or soft. He was in his late 20s, wore canvas jeans and a white undershirt. He held his cap in a broad dimpled hand. He always took his cap off when addressed by, or presenting himself to, an officer on board. His dark hair was butched. His face was a ham with small eyes, a flat nose, and a short lipless mouth.

Buddy, as the crew called him until recently, politely set the Greek fisherman's cap on a corner of the desk and eased himself into the armchair. He acted as though he had never encountered such a chair before, let alone sat in one.

"What's rubbing you wrong, Bud?"

He tilted his head away from Pete's direction and stared at him sideways, a pensive look, like he was trying to interpret a foreign speech.

Pete blinked at him in the hazy humid air. "You get a letter from home?"

Slowly Budwick straightened his head and stared at the deckboards. A forefinger tapped an armrest.

"Goddamn her," he said quietly.

Pete smoked a minute, remembering. Then he said, "The crew respects you, Bud. But they're getting tired of the surliness."

The big man made a noncommittal gesture with fingers, shoulders, and head.

"Look, I don't have any magical solutions, Mister Budwick. You just have to suck it up. Things like this happen. You shake it off or swallow it and get on with business. You're a good asset. One of these days you might be sitting at my desk. Don't blow your chances."

Budwick leaned over with forearms on knees and let his hands go limp.

"I'll get over it," he said.

"Until you do, pretend you have."

After a long moment Budwick nodded, slapped his knees and stood up like a grizzly rearing on its hind legs. "Anything else, Captain?" he asked, his face almost smiling.

"Ask around if Skippy's on board. He might've gone to the cockfights."

"Yeah, he did. Or I guess that's where he went. Hour ago."

"Good practice for first mates, evidently," Pete said. "Well, I'll handle it."

"Something I can help you with?"

"Naw, gonna radio Ross 0'Brien's place. Poker game tonight. Join us."

Budwick seemed to think it over, as if weighing the invitation against the pressure of his duties. Then he nodded. "I can do that," he said.

That night, as Ross shuffled the cards at the round folding table in the center of the cabin, with Pete, Riley, Ebal, Cookie, and Bud relaxing back in their wooden slat armchairs, the deckhead wreathed in tobacco smoke and strains of a rumba coming in through the stern windows from a cruise ship, the electric lantern shining possessively on the six piles of poker chips, the door shook with an urgent pounding and opened to reveal the watchman, Tubbs, squinting across at Pete.

"There's a constable wantin' to see the captain," he said. "There's been trouble in town. Sounds like Brickly."

Chapter 1

When Pate Popham saw the young woman coming toward the Seaside Inn with her eyes looking inwardly, he thought this might be the errant sister his ship's mechanic had asked him to keep a weather eye out for.

She seemed the right age, barely legal, her India-rubber raincoat framing her curvaceous figure, the unbuttoned length of shiny fabric blowing back away from her arms in the off-shore breeze that fluttered the Inn's pennants. The sister of Brickly was a strawberry blonde, Pete had been told, but the ingenue he was watching wore a scarf slicker over her hair. She went into the hotel.

Pete Popham slowed his stride. He glanced back at his ship, the Solo Maria. She was a tramp steamer docked at San Pio's east wharf awaiting the last of her cargo, her upper deck showing above the corrugated tin roofs of the warehouses and the waving flanges of stunted palms and banana trees.

Pete was a tall man in his late forties, lean and powerful, dressed in deck shoes, blue denim dockers and a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He wore an old Greek fisherman's cap, similar to a black slouch hat with a short embroidered bill. He wore no beard or moustache but was seldom clean-shaven. His was a face women looked at more than once, and never forgot. His dark hair was grey at the temples. White hairs had begun to appear in his black brows. His eyes were the color of bourbon, except when he drank too much of it.

Pete had time to delay his breakfast at the Plantation pub next door to the inn. The seller for Cassidy-Mifflin Tropical Produce was usually late, though when he was he paid for Pete's meal and didn't argue so much. It was only six-fifteen. Pete gave himself thirty minutes and walked into the lobby of the Seaside.

For the neglected British colony in a Caribbean backwater, San Pio's Seaside Inn was swank and cosmopolitan. It wasn't clean by continental standards, but the bugs seemed to restrain themselves somewhat and the general shabbiness of the place had a strangely nice art deco look if you used your imagination. The locals didn't bother. They had grown accustomed to the peeling flyblown grandeur. The tourists, whose numbers had lately increased with the strong economy in the States in that year 1927, were glad to be away from the winter weather up north and pretended that the sultry nonchalance of San Pio was just a step below heaven.

Pete saw the seller, Rothburg, waddling alongside the registration counter wiping his forehead with a damp handkerchief, carrying his straw fedora in his other hand along with a grey briefcase. Rothburg, a man of sixty with a baby face, wasn't as short as his bloated figure made him look. He needed a larger size vest and a fresh shirt.

He saw Pete and stopped to lean an elbow on the counter. "Some juju girl tell you where to find me?" he called amiably.

"Just my bad luck," said Pete. "Did you see a girl in a black slicker come in about ten seconds ago?" His eyes were roving the lobby and its assorted loungers and loafers.

"Popham," Rothburg chuckled, "everybody saw her."

"She go upstairs or into the dining room?"

"The diner. I got not so good news for you I'm afraid."

Pete looked worried. "What do you mean?"

"The banana shipment."

Pete scowled. "Oh that," he said, and after a thoughtful moment, added: "Let's have breakfast here so I can keep an eye on her."

"I'll help you."

The dozen tables were mostly empty, their wicker chairs turned askew and the two-bladed palm fans above them revolving lazily, as if powered by enertia. Popham chose a table toward the back where he had a good view of the room and open kitchen. Behind him was a broad screened window, a weedy garden seen through it, and, across the puddled street, a row of brick shops where a haggard group of tourists stood waiting for the tour bus to Buccaneer Beach.

"There she is," Pete said, nodding. Rothburg turned his massive body as far round in his chair as reality allowed.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Talking to the chef, and she isn't happy, no, not a bit."

"I hope it's not about the cooking."

Rothburg turned back around, red-faced from his efforts, as the waitress came up to the table. She was skinny and was surely ten years younger than her weathered looks suggested.

"Wot it be gent'men?" she asked in a hybrid Cockney accent, a pencil stub poised above her order pad.

"Gin and seltzer," Rothburg bellowed, "and drop in a big rock or two. Egg on toast. Easy over. Lots of butter."

She scribbled on the pad and smiled wistfully at Pete.

"Iced coffee," he said, still watching the errant sister. No doubt about her identity now. She had removed her scarf, swishing it down to her side in an angry gesture, the chef chewing his bottom lip.  The girl's bobbed blond hair had a reddish sheen to it. "Make it the biggest mug you've got," he went on. "A rasher of bacon with eggs lightly scrambled. Some grated cheese on the eggs if you've got any."

"Me guess is yes. I'll check. Sandi!" she all but yelled toward the kitchen. A native girl bobbed up from behind the cash register. "Have Slim roll the drink trolly out, luv," said the waitress as she stalked back across the room.

Rothburg linked his pudgy hands and bounced them on the table as he spoke, grinning, to Pete. "Gonna try catching her snatch, Popham?"

"More likely than not. She's the baby sister of my mechanic. You've met him. Todd Brickly."

"The grease monkey, yeah, sure. What's a nice sister like that doing in a place like this?"

"That's what Todd wants to know. Here come the drinks."

The native girl handed out the gin and coffee mug, both drinks tinkling with ice.

"Meal come soon," she said as if that was a rare event.

"Thanks," Pete said. "I forget his sister's name. He thinks she ought to be in school, in Georgia. No, belay that. Her name's Georgia. I forget the school, some women's college in the South somewhere. Anyway, he got news through the wireless the other day from his father who runs an auto repair shop in Birmingham. That's it. A school in Alabama."

"I'll be dead and buried before you finish," Rothburg quipped, and sipped his gin and soda.

"Tell me about the bananas then," Pete said testily. "Was it that goddamn monsoon last month?"

"Oh finish your story. The bananas can wait."

"They're waiting all right. And so am I. You try sitting around a deck loaded with fifteen tons of guano fertilizer and see how you like it."

Rothburg made an apologetic face. "You haven't any perishables in danger have you?"

"Naw, mostly sugar and shit. Some teak lumber and other hardware. I'll do fine once you bring me the bananas. My New York shipbroker will be madder than Todd's sister if I'm not tieing up at Mole Pier in Key West by the twenty-eighth."

Rothburg squeezed his hands together and put then firmly down on the table for emphasis. "I can promise you that in seven days at the most a crane will be lowering those pallets on your deck."

"Christ, Rothy, a week's wait?"

"At the very most! You know what a shambles that storm made of things at the plantation. The worst blow since before the war. We've half the coloreds on the island slaving day and night."

Pete smiled wryly. "Send one over to the Solo Maria. I'm short a hand."

"Now go on about the girl," Rothburg said to change the subject.  "And I'll be wanting another one of these," he added, raising his glass.

"According to you you'll be an alcoholic before I finish the story. Well, what I remember about Todd's ramblings is that his pop thinks Georgia's biological father--- Uh, she was adopted from an orphanage when she was a little thing. Anyway, there's this worry that her real dad has talked her away from the school and she's gotten mixed up in his shady activities in some Havana mob outfit. Evidently the dad's been in and out of the slammer since running away from home at twelve."

"How fascinating," Rothburg commented, waving at the waitress. "Freshen up your coffee, Popham?"

"Sure," he said, then a moment later in a tense voice: "She's leaving. Stay put, I'll be back in a minute."

He got up and went over to the archway entrance to the lobby. Georgia Brickly had her raincoat under her arm, her scarf hanging half out of her skirt pocket, a small beaded purse in one hand, going out the front door, the gust swinging her burnished blond hair as she turned down the mosaic sidewalk.

Pete followed, cursing under his breath.

Outside he saw her approaching a line of four taxi cabs, the drivers standing around with a news boy, all five staring at her appreciatively. Pete stopped and loitered beside a modest group of locals at a sidewalk grill that was smoking with cuts of fish. One of the cabmen waved and called out to him. He frowned and shook his head. The cabman nodded knowingly and looked away, edging a little closer to the girl.

Georgia spoke to the older cabman. He bowed and opened his taxi's passenger door for her.

When the cab was going up the street amid jalopies and the jittery horse drawn wagons, Pete walked up to the slender redhaired cabman who had hailed him.

"Hello, Ross."

"Hi there, Cap'n. Cards tonight?"

"Maybe. Can you tell me where Art's taking the girl?"

"To the Swede's boarding house on Shingle."

"Hear anything else?"

"Just the smooth young warble of her nymphet voice."

"You'll get yourself in trouble one of these days," Pete said, slipping a wrinkled pound note in the young cabman's coat pocket.

"Sure I will, Cap'n. Then I'll stowaway on your boat. See the world. Live the good life."

"I'd run you around the equator and have you scrubbing the decks. Your brother still have that wireless?"

"Yeah."

"My efficient hop-to-it first mate will let you know about a poker game tonight if I get around to it. Looks like I'll be stranded here for a few days more. I'll get that pound note back."

"Like hell."

Pete gave the lad a friendly punch on the arm and turned back to the hotel.