There was nobody on the Gulf Lady. He leaned on a mooring post to wait. Like all cops, he knew the meaning of patience. Information gathered in a matter of seconds was for TV thrillers. In real life, you spent most of your time waiting. Jimmy Dobbs showed up at ten.
“Mr. Dobbs?”
“That’s me.”
“Hi—my name’s Eddie. I’m from Florida. This your boat?”
“Sure is. You here for the fishing?”
“That’s my game,” said Favaro. “Friend of mine recommended you.”
“That’s nice.”
“Julio Gomez. You remember him?”
The black man’s open, honest face clouded. He reached into the Gulf Lady and took a rod from a holder. He examined the jig lure and the hook for several seconds, then handed the rod to Favaro.
“You like yellowtail snapper? They some good snapper right under the dock. Down at the far end.”
Together they walked to the far end of the jetty, out of earshot of anyone else. Favaro wondered why.
Jimmy Dobbs took the rod back and cast expertly across the water. He reeled in slowly, letting the brightly colored jig wriggle and turn beneath the surface. A small blue runner made a dart for the lure and turned away.
“Julio Gomez dead,” Jimmy Dobbs said gravely.
“I know,” said Favaro. “I’d like to find out why. He fished with you a lot, I think.”
“Every year. He good man, nice guy.”
“He tell you what his job was in Miami?”
“Yep. Once.”
“You ever tell anyone else?”
“Nope. You a friend or a colleague?”
“Both, Jimmy. Tell me, when did you last see Julio?”
“Right here, Thursday evening. We’d been out all day. He booked me for Friday morning. Never showed up.”
“No,” said Favaro. “He was at the airstrip, trying to get a flight to Miami. In a hurry. He picked the wrong plane—blew up over the sea. Why did we have to walk down here to talk?”
Jimmy Dobbs hooked a two-pound horse-eye jack and handed the shivering rod to Favaro. The American reeled in. He was inexpert. The jack took some slack line and jumped the hook.
“They some bad people on these islands,” he said simply.
Favaro realized he could now identify an odor he had smelled in the town: It was fear. He knew about fear. No Miami cop is stranger to that unique aroma. Somehow, fear had now come to paradise.
“When he left you, he was a happy man?”
“Yep. One fine fish he was taking home for supper. He was happy. No problems.”
“Where did he go from here?”
Jimmy Dobbs looked surprised. “To Mrs. Macdonald’s, of course. He always stayed with her.”
Mrs. Macdonald was not at home. She was out shopping. Favaro decided to come back later. First, he would try the airport. He returned to Parliament Square. There were two taxis, but both drivers were at lunch. There was nothing he could do about it; he crossed the square to the Quarter Deck to eat and wait for them to come back. He took a verandah seat from where he could watch for the taxis. All around him was the same excited buzz that had pervaded breakfast—the talk being only of the murder of the Governor the previous evening.
“They sending a senior detective from Scotland Yard,” one of the group near Favaro announced.
Two men entered the bar. They were big, and they said not a word. The conversation died. The two men removed every poster proclaiming the candidacy of Marcus Johnson and put up different ones. The new posters said, VOTE LIVINGSTONE, THE PEOPLE’S CANDIDATE. When they had finished, they left.
The waiter came over and set down grilled fish and a beer.
“Who were they?” asked Favaro.
“Election helpers of Mr. Livingstone,” the waiter said expressionlessly.
“People seem to be frightened of them.”
“No, sah.”
The waiter turned away, eyes blank. Favaro had seen that expression in interrogation rooms at the Metro-Dade headquarters. Shutters come down behind the eyes. The message is, “There’s no one home.”
The jumbo carrying Superintendent Hannah and DI Parker touched down at Nassau at three P.M., local time. A senior officer of the Bahamian Police boarded first, identified the two men from Scotland Yard, introduced himself, and welcomed them to Nassau. He escorted them out of the cabin before the other passengers, then down to a waiting Land-Rover. The first gust of warm, balmy air swept over Hannah. In his London clothes he felt sticky at once.
The Bahamian officer took their baggage checks and handed them to a constable, who would extract the two valises from the rest of the baggage. Hannah and Parker were driven straight to the VIP lounge. There they met the British Deputy High Commissioner, Mr. Longstreet, and a more junior staffer called Bannister.
“I’ll be coming to Sunshine with you,” said Bannister. “Some problem over there with the communications. It seems they can’t get the Governor’s safe open. I’ll fix a new set, so you can talk to the High Commission here on a direct radiotelephone link. Secure, of course. And of course, we’ll have to get the body back when the coroner releases it.”
He sounded brisk and efficient. Hannah liked that. He met the four men from the forensic team provided by the Bahamian Police as a courtesy. The conference took an hour.
Hannah looked down from the windows to the airport apron below. Thirty yards away, a chartered ten-seater was waiting to take him and his now-expanded party to Sunshine. Between the building and the airplane, two camera teams had been set up to catch the moment. He sighed.
When the final details had been settled, the group left the VIP lounge and headed downstairs. Microphones were thrust at him, notepads held ready.
“Mr. Hannah, are you confident of an early arrest?” “Will this turn out to be a political murder?” “Is Sir Marston’s death linked to the election campaign?”
He nodded and smiled but said nothing. Flanked by Bahamian constables, they all emerged from the building into the hot sunshine and headed for the aircraft. The TV cameras recorded it all. When the official party had boarded, the journalists raced away toward their own chartered planes, which had been obtained by the production of large wads of dollars or prechartered by the London offices. In an untidy gaggle the planes began to taxi for takeoff. It was four twenty-five.
At three-thirty, a small Cessna dropped its wings over Sunshine and turned for the final run-in to the grass airstrip.
“Pretty wild place!” the American pilot shouted to the man beside him. “Beautiful, but from way back! I mean, they don’t have nothing here!”
“Short on technology,” agreed Sam McCready. He looked through the prespex at the dusty strip coming towards them. To the left of the strip were three buildings: a corrugated-iron hangar, a low shed with a red tin roof (the reception building), and a white cube with the British flag flying above it—the police hut. Outside the reception shed, a figure in a short-sleeved beach shirt was talking to a man in boxer shorts and singlet. A car stood nearby. The palm trees rose on either side of the Cessna, and the small plane thumped onto the grit. The buildings flashed past as the pilot settled his nose-wheel and lifted his flaps. At the far end of the strip, he turned around and began to taxi back.
“Sure, I remember that plane. It was dreadful when I heard later that those poor people were dead.”
Favaro found the baggage porter who had loaded the Navajo Chief the previous Friday morning. His name was Ben, and he always loaded the baggage. It was his job. Like most of the islanders, he was free-and-easy, honest, and prepared to talk.
Favaro produced a photograph. “Did you notice this man?”