This time the blackjack bounced off my skull. It got as dark inside my head as it was inside the sack. I sailed off peacefully to never-never land.
The last thing I thought of before I slipped into unconsciousness was not former President of the United States Nicholas Swillhouse Dickson!
Chapter Two
Not so many years ago there was a popular syndicated cartoon strip called Silly Milly. One of the running gags, as I recall, involved a character who had been swallowed by a whale. Milly would pry open the whale’s mouth, peer inside, and yell down, “How is it in there?” And the answer would come floating back up: “Very dark!”
That’s how it was when I woke up inside the sack. Very dark. When I opened my eyes it was exactly the same. Very dark.
My head ached. It took me a minute to separate the throbbing from the throbbing underneath me. That vibration, I figured out, came from the engine of a boat. Judging by its closeness, I was in the hold. From the sound, it was a medium-powered craft, the kind that can sleep maybe eight people. The way the water was slapping at the hull, it was moving along at a pretty fast clip.
Footsteps. Coming closer. And then a voice.
“Open the sack. Let’s have a look at her and make sure you didn’t bash her skull in.”
“Si, señor.”
The sack was opened and I came popping out as eagerly as a jack-in-the-box springing free of the box. A light show assaulted my unready eyeballs. It was a minute before the lightning stopped crackling around my retina.
“You dumbhead!” The first voice again. “What the hell is this? Where’s the girl!”
“No comprendo, amigo! No—”
My pinball eyes stopped hitting the flashing light bumpers and settled into their sockets. The first speaker came into focus. He was a large black man, a Bahamian, judging by the lilt to his voice.
“Don’t give me that spic jive!” he snapped.
The second man, a light-skinned Cuban, shrugged. A third man, white, with a face like the losing side of an Irish donnybrook, spoke. “Sure and it was dark as the soul of an Orangeman,” he told the black leader.
“I don’t want any spic jive, and I don’t want any mick jive either!” The Bahamian glared at the two of them. Then he turned to me. He towered over me. Also he had a very large revolver in his hand. “Now who are you?” he demanded. “And what’s your connection with the chick?”
“I’m Steve Victor.” I smiled winningly. “I’m a friend of the family.”
“Don’t you wise-ass me, whitey! Save that jive and lay it on the NAACP when you get back to Yankee land! Now give!”
“I gave at the office,” I murmured.
“If you get back to Yankee land!” he amended. “So start talking!”
Start talking? What was I supposed to say? Recite Langston Hughes, maybe? I was saved from having to decide by a sudden commotion above deck. It was punctuated by the sound of gunfire and the sudden, sharp listing of the boat as a shell exploded in the water just to starboard.
“Put him back in the sack. We’ll get it out of him later.” The Bahamian was already heading up the ladder to the deck as he called out the instructions over his shoulder.
The Cuban kept me covered while the Irishman stuffed me back into the sack and tied it closed again. I heard their retreating footsteps as they too climbed the ladder. Then I was alone, back in the sack. How was it in there?
Very dark!
Just the thing to clean out your ears. Mine were operating at peak efficiency. And all that they were hearing added up to the sounds of violence.
First it was the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire punctuated by the occasional loud plop of what I took to be a small- to medium-size shell hitting the water. Then there were shouts and curses, some from a distance which seemed to be decreasing as they grew louder, others from above deck, directly over my head. Finally, there was the sound of close-quarter gunfire over my head, and scuffling, and the splash of bodies hitting the water.
Relative silence. Then, after what seemed a very long time, the sack was opened again and I was released. I found myself facing a whole new cast of characters.
However, they were singing the same old refrain:
“What the hell is this?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Yeah, who the hell is he?”
“Where the hell’s the girl?”
They had guns. Some of them pointed them at me hesitantly as if not sure whether it was necessary to cover me or not. Others scratched their heads and looked at each other, rephrasing the questions they'd already asked.
They simmered down when a small man in a business suit came down to the hold and looked me over. He didn’t know what to make of me either, but at least he seemed to have the authority to make some sort of decision. “We’ll bring him in,” he told the others. “Let Upstairs decide what to do with him. We don’t have the girl, and he’s better than nothing.”
“Did they get away with the girl?” someone asked.
“We don’t know.”
I could have told them that the other group had never had her, but when I realized they were going to keep me down in the hold under guard, it sort of squelched any feelings I might have had of wanting to cooperate with them. My guard was strictly tongue-tied. The only conversation I had for the next few hours was between me and me.
When the engine stopped, I realized we’d reached our destination. The small man came down again. Obeying his instructions, two other men blindfolded me and led me up the ladder to the deck. The blindfold made it obvious that they didn’t want me to know where I was being taken.
Naturally this realization made me even more curious. I put my mind to work. The deck under my feet was replaced by a rickety wooden dock, and then sand. I could hear a breeze rustling palm trees. We were still in the Caribbean. The air was cool on my face, no touch of sun. It was still night.
The air was cool on my naked genitals as well. I’d lost my bathing trunks in the palm tree, and when they’d released me from the sack, my new captors hadn’t bothered to cover my nudity. There must not be any strangers around to see me since a blind man in the buff would have been sure to arouse comment. Our landing place, therefore, must be secluded.
We mounted steps. Some sort of porch, or veranda. A pause. A door was opened. There was an exchange of low voices. I was led inside. Another door, an inner room. Pressure on my shoulders to make me sit. I sat. Cheap leatherette iced my scrotum.
The blindfold was removed. I blinked. The small man from the boat was sitting at the other end of the leatherette couch. Another guy, with a gun, leaned back on a chair to one side of me, keeping me covered. Across from me a light-skinned black man with salt-and-pepper gray hair sat behind a desk. He seemed to be the superior of the small man from the boat; he seemed to be in charge.
“Where’s the girl?” The black man came directly to the point. He was talking to me. He had a broad Boston accent.
“Before I answer any questions, I have a request,” I announced.
“You’re in no position to make any requests!” he informed me firmly.
“I m in a position to make this one,” I told him.
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to borrow a jockstrap from one of you fellows.”
His thin lips twitched into a repressed smile. There was the flash of a dimple on his black cheek. He switched an intercom on his desk and told somebody to dig up a pair of pants and a shirt for me.
Then came the questions. Most of them meant nothing to me, and I couldn’t answer them. I told the truth about what I did know. Why not? I had nothing to hide even though my interrogator wouldn’t tell me who he represented, or Why he was questioning me.