Twenty Blue Devils (11 page)
Near the platform scales at one end of the open shed Nick pulled a couple of liter cartons of papaya-and-pineapple juice out of a cooler and handed one to John. They went to sit at an ancient, splintery picnic table under a row of eucalyptus trees that bordered one side of the drying shed.
Nick slowly, wearily pulled his carton open, tipped it up, and swallowed a long, gurgling draft, his Adam's apple bobbing. Then another. He looked tired, washed-out.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper, Uncle Nick,” John said when he set the carton down.
"I'm the one who should be sorry, Johnny. I guess I owe you an explanation. Your friend too."
He crushed the carton against the table, carefully flattened it out, smoothed down the seams, took his time getting going.
"It was Therese,” he said, still working over the carton. “I sat down with her and told her we were having him exhumed and why, and she just about came apart. You can understand that, can't you? You know she's kind of...delicate. And she took Brian's death hard, John. They really loved each other."
"Yeah, I can understand that. So you called it off?"
"No, not then. I thought she'd come around after a day or two...” He shook his head. “...but I just couldn't get through to her. She was really...so yesterday I finally called the health department and canceled it. You guys were already on your way so I couldn't tell you not to come, and then when you got here I just didn't want to tell you you'd made the trip for nothing in the middle of the night.” He finally pushed the mashed carton aside and looked up. “So that's the story. I'm sorry if it screwed you up, but I still think I did the right thing."
John was silent for a moment. “I don't, Nick."
"Hell, it's not as if it was going to amount to anything."
"That's not true, Nick. There are a lot of unresolved questions here."
"I tell you the truth, John, I don't much care. Even if Gasparone's goons really knocked him off, then let that be the end of it. I don't think you understand how shook up she is, and I'm not going to put that girl through hell all over again. For what? I mean, let's say you turn out to be right, which I don't think you are, but just for the sake of argument. So what happens then, a trial? Testifying? Drag it out for two more years? And then what? Have you thought about that?"
John peered at him. “That doesn't sound like you, Nick."
Nick shrugged. “I'm not the man I was, John. I don't do battle with the world anymore. I'm almost seventy, you know. Wait'll you get there; you'll see."
That didn't sound like him either. “Nick, you can't just let this go. This was
Brian
. I want you to change your mind."
"No.” But Brian's name had brought a wince. “I can do whatever I damn please, John, and in this case I'm putting Therese first.” He got up. “I've got to get back to the dryers.” But he stood there a little longer, leaning on his knuckles on the table. “Look, I'm really sorry about your friend Gideon coming out here for nothing. But as long as
you're
here, I know Therese would appreciate it if you stayed for the service. Gideon too, if he wants; he's more than welcome. Until then, why don't you loosen up and relax, for Christ's sake? Lay back for a few days, see some of the islands, go over to Bora Bora, eat some good food, get reacquainted with the family. Some people actually like it here, you know."
John replied with a shrug, not unfriendly but meaningless. He walked back with Nick and watched for a while as he scooped, studied, poked, and bit the revolving beans. “You have any objection if I talk to Therese about it?” he said after a few minutes.
"Jesus, can't we even have one dinner like a normal family before you start—"
"I don't mean today,” John said quickly. “Tomorrow, maybe."
Nick stopped his work and looked at John for a while. “I don't want you browbeating her, Johnny. She's been through enough."
"Hey, Nick.” He put his hand on the shaggy forearm and stopped him in mid-scoop. “You really think I'd browbeat Therese?"
Nick studied him hard for a moment, then relaxed. “No, I guess not. Sure, talk to her about it if you want. Just take no for an answer, will you?"
"Don't worry,” John said. “I've had lots of practice at that.” The air between them had almost cleared. “So tell me, how do you tell moisture content from chewing on the beans?"
"Don't start patronizing me. I'm not that decrepit."
"No, I'm really interested. Tell me."
Nick told him. The beans had to be dried to a ten percent moisture content before being bagged. Dryer than that and they lost flavor. Wetter—with a moisture content of even twelve percent, say—they were likely to mold within a few weeks. But at ten percent they stayed fresh indefinitely.
"You can do it scientifically, of course,” Nick said, “but I like the old eyetooth-crunch technique. Here, take one of these. Have a bite."
John bit.
"Sort of gummy,” Nick said, “right?"
John nodded.
"That's because the moisture's at twelve or thirteen percent. Now try this one.” He handed him another bean, slightly paler, from a drum that he had turned off earlier. “This one's right at ten percent."
John bit again.
"Crisp, isn't it?” Nick said. “Sort of snaps right in two. Feel the difference?"
"I sure do,” John said, nodding. “That's really interesting.” Nick's good-humored laugh rolled easily out of him. “You always were a good faker. Can you really tell the difference?” John grinned back at him. “Not if my life depended on it, Unc."
There is no rail system on the island of Tahiti, no commuter plane network, no bus service. If you want public transportation you do what the locals do: you climb aboard
le truck
, as everyone refers, individually and collectively, to the ubiquitous and whimsically painted fleet of “cabooses” mounted on individually owned flatbed trucks (which is why they are called
le truck
and not
le bus
).
Gideon waved down a southbound one on rue Francois Cardella and found an unoccupied section of padded bench. On his left was a smiling old man clad only in shorts, with a wire crate containing two plainly disgruntled white chickens on his lap. On his right was a middle-aged woman wearing a bright
pareu
, with a hibiscus flower in her hair, thong sandals on her feet, and a braided string of gleaming red mullet in one hand. In the other hand was a leather attache case with a cellular telephone clamped to it.
Across from him a gaggle of high school girls, already Polynesian stunners at fifteen or sixteen, tittered and chattered away in Tahitian, bothered by neither the reggae music blaring from
le truck's
loudspeaker nor the transistor radios plugged into their ears.
Culture in flux, he thought. At the lively, sprawling market an hour earlier he had bought Julie a handsome black-pearl pendant. The native woman at the stall, shy and smiling, had spoken no English and only a little French. She had struck him as a charming throwback to the unspoiled Tahiti of the eighteenth century. But when he had made his choice she had revealed a minimal knowledge of English after all. “Visa? MasterCard? American Express?” she had inquired in a charming accent and then processed the transaction on a computer screen equipped with Windows.
Le truck
made its stop-and-start journey through the outer reaches of Papeete's urban sprawl: a long string of convenience stores, bars, restaurants, shoddy two-story apartment buildings, and metal-roofed shantytowns. But after twenty minutes the smelly, noisy commercial traffic eased off and the shantytowns thinned out and then disappeared entirely, to be replaced by occasional native villages, one much like another: modest, compact assemblages of small stucco houses—some nice, some not so nice—set among astonishing profusions of hibiscus and gardenia, often with old stone churches as centerpieces.
Between the villages the vegetation thickened and became more tropical, and clefts in the coastal mountains opened up to reveal the stupendous hanging green valleys of the interior. When Gideon saw the sign for the Shangri-La coming up, he pressed the old-fashioned doorbell-button above his head and
le truck
pulled up beside the trellised arch over the entryway to the grounds. He walked around to the driver's window, handed over the fare-200 French Pacific francs, about $2— and went to his cottage to get in some work on the Bronze Age symposium.
But he hadn't been at it five minutes when he knew his heart, and more important, his head, weren't in it. He yawned, threw his notes down, and looked at his watch. Not much after one o'clock. Another yawn. Finding a hammock was starting to sound like a pretty good idea, and he was giving serious thought to the possibility of acting on it when he recalled Nick's invitation of the night before: a tour of the coffee farm.
Why not? Considering the thousands of gallons of the stuff he'd downed in the last twenty years, it was about time he visited one. Besides, underneath all that reasonable and healthy skepticism he'd been expressing to John, he had to admit to a certain curiosity about seeing the murderous pulper, the falling-down shed, and the various other inanimate objects that seemed to have it in for Nick Druett and the Paradise Coffee enterprise.
The hammock could wait; Gideon went to find Dean Parks at the front desk.
"Dean, how would I get up to Nick's plantation from here?"
"Easy. I'll have Honu take you up in the van. Whoops, not for a couple of hours, though; he's in town picking up supplies."
"Is it too far to walk?"
"'Bout eight miles. Uphill every blessed inch."
"Too far,” Gideon said.
"I'd say so. His house is less than half a mile down the road, though. Easy walking. If you don't want to wait for the van, somebody there's bound to give you a lift up to the farm."
"I think I'll try that. How do I recognize his house?"
Dean laughed. “Keep your eyeballs peeled for the place that looks like it belongs to the Wazir of Kitchipoo."
Dean was exaggerating, but not by that much. Nick's house stood in splendid isolation, in walled, parklike grounds that jutted out into the sea on their own private promontory. Like ninety-nine percent of the houses in the South Seas, it was covered with a green, corrugated metal roof. Other than that, it would have been right at home on the French Riviera. Faced with white stucco and polished river rock, embellished with ornate white grillwork on its several balconies and verandas, and fronted with rows of French doors instead of windows, the handsome two-story structure stood on a wide lawn commanding a wonderful view of beach, ocean, and, in the distance, the domed green peninsula of Tahiti Iti.
Gideon walked between the twin stone pillars of the driveway and headed toward the house at an angle across the lawn.
"Can I help you?"
He looked toward a trellised patio on the right to see a pair of women finishing off a meal with mugs of coffee at a round, glass-topped table; one about forty, the other in her sixties, with scant, dark hair that sat on her scalp like a cloud. The older one was Asiatic—Chinese, he guessed—the younger a mixture of Asiatic and Caucasian and a foot taller, but the shape of their jaws, the slope of their shoulders, even the inquisitive tilt of their heads marked them as relatives. Mother and daughter, he thought. Celine and Maggie.
"Hi,” he said. “I'm Gideon Oliver. I'm—"
"Oh, you Johnny's friend,” said the older woman, her round face crinkling into a smile not all that different from John's. She held up a pitcher. “Want some coffee?"
He shook his head. “Thanks, I had some with lunch. You're Mrs. Druett?"
"You bet. Johnny's Auntie Celine."
"And I'm Maggie, John's cousin,” said the younger one, the one who had called out, frankly appraising him with sharp, black, intelligent eyes. “Well, well. The family's heard some pretty strange stories about you over the years."
Likewise, Gideon thought but didn't say. He laughed. “Well, you can't believe everything John says, you know."
Maggie swallowed the last of her coffee and stood up, a solid, thick-bodied woman with a Chinese-style, bolerolike silk jacket decorously buttoned over shoulders left bare by her
pareu
. She leaned over to kiss her mother on the forehead. “See you tomorrow, Mom."
"Okay, honey,” Celine said absently, “you be good now. Gideon, you know something? You looking at the only woman alive who work with John Barrymore."
"Really?” said Gideon.
"He gonna be my uncle in
Pippi of the Islands
. Nineteen forty-two. He drop dead right before filming start. Damn picture never got made."
"Really,” said Gideon.
"He don't believe me,” Celine said.
"It's true,” Maggie told him. “More or less. Mom was the Tahitian Shirley Temple for a while. Listen, I'm on my way back up to the plantation. How about a lift? Poppa said you were coming up for a tour."
"Sure,” said Gideon. “I was hoping for a ride. Goodbye, Mrs. Druett. Nice meeting you."
"Work with Abbott and Costello too,” Celine informed him.
"The man without a mission,” said Maggie as she got into the driver's seat of her gray Peugeot.
"Pardon?"
"Well, you were coming out to do your thing on poor Brian, weren't you? Until Poppa changed his mind?"
Gideon turned to face her more directly as she steered the car onto the highway. “Do you know what made him change it?"
She shrugged. “Nothing makes Nick Druett change his mind. He just changed it, that's all. I guess he thought it wasn't such a good idea after all."
"And what do you think?"
Not a good question. Maggie's face hardened. “What I think is that my father usually turns out to be right about most things."
But after a few moments, when she saw he wasn't going to pursue it, she softened. “All the same, I'm a little sorry we're not going through with it. It would have been nice to lay that stupid gangland business to rest once and for all. This way, there'll always be rumors."