Outside, dusk was floating down on the dying rays of a Caribbean sunset. I crossed the walled-in grounds of Rococco’s estate to the area from which I judged the shots had come. Taking a turn at a grove of palm trees, I was greeted by a rifle butt bouncing off my solar plexus.
“Oof!” I said, the best I could do by way of returning the greeting.
“Sure an’ don’t you know you're out-o’-bounds here, boyo?”
The voice was familiar. As it emerged into the half-light of dusk, so was the face. It took me a minute to remember where we’d met before. Then I had it
“You’re the Irishman who was on the boat,” I managed to grunt.
He peered at me in the darkness. Then he snapped his fingers. “The bucko in the sack!” He gave me a spotty grin, spotty due to his missing one or two frontish teeth. “Sure an’ I've not forgotten you.”
“Since we’re such old sailing buddies,” I reminded him, “would you mind getting that gun out of my midriff?” I put my hand on the barrel to push the gun away. The barrel was still hot. It had been recently fired. The gun was a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight.
Despite my attempt to separate myself from it, the rifle didn’t move from its painfully prodding perch. “Now you should know better than to be handing out blarney to an Irishman,” my captor told me. “Just what are you doin’ out here, anyway? Answer me fast now, boyo. I feel a twitch comin’ on my trigger finger.”
I answered him all right. Before his twitch could twang the trigger, I tightened my grip on the rifle barrel and tugged. At the same time I brought my knee up into his groin.
“Oof!” It was his turn.
I gave him no chance to recover. I delivered a karate chop to his Adam’s apple. He went down, purple and gasping. Before he could hit the ground I tapped his skull with the rifle barrel, using just enough clout to put him to sleep for a convenient while.
“Sean? Amigo?” The Spanish-accented voice came from the underbrush off to my left.
I faded into the palm grove and waited. A moment later another figure emerged into the clearing. He was the light-skinned Cuban who’d been with the Irishman on the boat. I stuck Sean’s gun into his back and told him to drop the firearm he was carrying. Like Sean’s it was a high-powered job with a telescopic sight.
He dropped it—right on my foot, putting all his weight into it. The sudden pain shooting up my leg was so intense that I almost dropped the rifle I’d taken from Sean. Almost, but not quite. I’m the vindictive type. Instead of dropping Sean’s gun, I clouted the Cuban over the head with it. He fell to the ground beside Sean, out just as cold as the Irishman was.
I picked up the Cuban’s rifle. I broke it open. There was a clip in the chamber. One bullet had been fired. I sniffed the barrel. Recently fired.
That accounted for two of the potshots taken at Dickson. It wasn’t too hard for me to make an educated guess as to the origin of the third shot. Somewhere around here was a black Bahamian with an ingrained prejudice against ofays.
“Hold it right there, Snow White!”
I’d completed three-quarters of a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn meant to ferret him out when his voice sounded from behind me. “First Sleepy and Dopey.” I indicated the two unconscious forms on the ground. “And now my old friend Grumpy. You’d be a sight for sore eyes if I could see you.”
“I’m Bashful.” He corrected me. “Drop those guns first, and then maybe I’ll drop my magic cloak of in- visibility.”
I dropped the guns.
“Okay, Snow White, your Prince has come.” He stepped around in front of me, kicking the two guns out of my reach. He was holding a rifle of the same make and model.
“I’m gonna file a complaint with my Fairy Godmother,” I told him. “You still look like Grumpy to me.
“Once upon a time,” he pointed out, “there was an Enchanted Forest which was strictly off limits to ofay ogres such as you, Snow White. Now if I was to ask my mirror-mirror-on-the-wall how come you to be here, what answer do you s’pose I’d get?”
“I’m Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson’s bodyguard.”
“And I’m the White Knight. Come on, honky, you can do better than that. I’ll give you three.” He cocked the rifle.
“It’s true!”
“One . . .”
“I really am Dickson’s bodyguard!”
“Two . . .”
“Check me out before you do anything drastic!”
“Three!”
I dived sideways and the bullet zinged past my earlobe. One silly millimeter closer and I’d have been halfway to a pair of pierced ears. As it was, the breeze ruffled my sideburns.
The Bahamian swiveled to fire again. I came up with an overripe coconut and lobbed it at him. He ducked. It missed. But it delayed his aiming the rifle effectively again.
I took advantage of the delay. My plunge was for his feet, intending to knock them out from under him. He avoided it so smoothly as to make me think fleeting racist thoughts about “natural rhythm.” He tap-danced “Swanee River” over my face.
The options were limited. I bit his ankle. My choppers dug for marrow. The maneuver didn't improve race relations.
He tried for a high kick to my nose. I stuck my proboscis into my armpit by way of defense. What with all the exercise I was getting, my deodorant was let- ting me down. Also, I’d had to wrench my teeth loose from his foot. That left it free to stomp out a George M. Cohan medley on the back of my neck. I saw stars and stripes. Then I only saw stars. The show ended with a blackout.
My ears opened up before my eyes. I had no idea how long I’d been out. I felt a mattress under my back. Also there was no Caribbean breeze ruffling the air. I was indoors, on a bed, or a sofa of some kind.
“Why not just off him?” The Bahamian’s voice.
“Not until we find out where he fits in.” A new speaker, one I hadn’t heard before.
They were arguing, I realized, about my fate. I couldn’t help taking sides. My cheering section was all-out for the new boy.
I opened my eyes. The Bahamian was looking black thunder at me. Behind him the Irishman and the Cuban were passing a bottle of Mercurochrome back and forth and tending to their wounds. No help there. I turned my attention to the new man in the room.
He was in his fifties, well-built, outdoorsy-looking with a deep tan and I’d guess good muscle tone, a Latin cast to his features. Now he saw that I’d regained consciousness. “Who are you?” He put the question bluntly.
“Karl Powers.” I remembered to answer with my alias. “Who are you?”
“PeePee Rococco.” His proud tone demanded at the very least a tug at the old forelock.
My forelock remained untugged. “I’m President Dickson’s bodyguard,” I announced, figuring that brazening it out was my best shot in the circumstances. “And these men have been interfering with my doing my duty.”
Much hostile murmurs in Gaelic, Cuban-accented Spanish, and Bahamian patois. Rococco gestured them to silence. “These men are guards in my employ,” he informed me. “Their job is to guard my property against intruders. You were trespassing. Also you assaulted them. I would be perfectly within my rights in having you shot.”
“But kind of shaky legally.” I gave him a sick grin. I didn’t want to be shot. I hadn’t done my Christmas shopping yet. For 1997.
“Legally?” He looked at me as if I’d just won the Oscar for Fool of the Year.
I remembered to whom I was talking. PeePee Rococco. Legalities weren’t part of his lexicon. This was the man who’d guided various brothers and nephews of the President into the receiving of Las Vegas moneys from a well-known recluse millionaire bent on bending the antimonopoly laws23 . This was the man who’d okayed the deposit of vast sums of laundered money in the bank he controlled, a bank, it might be added, which operated without competition thanks to government antitrust decisions in its favor. And this was the man who’d brought the Mafia under the benificence of the Presidency itself! Legally? Shee-it! I accepted the dunce cap.