Vineyard Deceit (22 page)

“What?”

“One of them is one of the people who like those musicians you like too. I think that is very funny, don't you?”

What musicians? We pulled up to the dock. “Tell me what's funny, Bonzo.”

“Don't you get it, J.W.? The people who live in a guitar like the Gits! Guitar, Gits. You get it, J.W.? Gits and guitar are almost the same sound! Funny!”

I put a grin on my face. “Get your fish, Bonzo. Your mom is going to be very pleased.”

“Yeah,” he beamed. “Yeah, she will.”

“Were the guitar people in the Fireside last night, Bonzo?”

His brow wrinkled, then smoothed again. “Last night? Yes, last night. They usually come in late, you know, just before we close up. The one girl, she puts money in the machine and plays the Gits. They all like the Gits, but she likes them best of all.” He looked at me with his great empty eyes. “She likes the Gits just like you do, I guess, J.W. Say, when can we go fishing again? I like fishing for bonito.”

“Sometime soon. You're ahead of me and I have to try to catch up.”

I drove him home. His mother came out of her ginger-bread
house and admired his wonderful fish. Bonzo smiled his wide, bright smile, waved, and took the fish inside.

“Thank you, J.W.,” said his mother.

“You should be proud of him,” I said.

“I am. Oh, I am.”

I drove back to the dock and loaded the dinghy into the LandCruiser.

The people who lived in a guitar liked the Gits. The people who lived in Gwatar liked the Gits, and one of them liked the Gits a lot. Zee's abductors played Git music until Zee was sick of it.

I drove up to the hospital, parked, and walked up to the emergency room door and peeked in. Zee was talking to a young doctor in a white coat. I sneaked back to my car.

I drove to Edgartown and chained the dinghy back in its place by the seawall. Then I went home for lunch. I felt like a hound who had finally picked up a scent.

19

I went down to the police station after lunch and stopped by the Chiefs office. Naturally he wasn't there, so I drove on downtown and actually found a parking place on Main Street. After a half an hour on Main, a meter maid will come by and nail you with a ticket, but I thought a half hour should be enough. I found the Chief coming out of the courthouse. Policemen spend very little time catching criminals and a lot of time doing paperwork. We leaned on his cruiser, and I told him what Bonzo had said. When I was through, he grunted. “Now I imagine you're going to go up to the Fireside tonight and hope the Gwatar
people come in so you can follow them home or some such thing.”

“They didn't make you the Chief for nothing,” I said admiringly. “I want to get in touch with Jake Spitz. How do I do it?”

He dug out his little notepad and read off a phone number. “I doubt if he's there,” he said. “Why do you want to talk to him?”

“I want to find out what the Padishah and his bodyguard are up to. I don't even know if they're still on the island.”

“Does it make any difference?”

“It might. My anonymous phone caller said some foreigner was out to damage me and Zee. The Padishah is the only guy I know who might fit that description, and I think Colonel Nagy is the man he'd send to attend to the job. The Padishah doesn't strike me as the type to do his own dirty work.”

“Is that the only reason you want to know where they are?”

“You sound doubtful. You're becoming a suspicious old man.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No. Nagy pulled a gun when Zee pushed his boss overboard. I don't know guns as well as Manny Fonseca does, but it looked to me like about a 9 mm semiautomatic. I'd like to know if the Colonel still has his pistol or whether it's the one found in Willard Blunt's hand.”

“Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

“I don't know.”

“Too bad.”

“I'll give Spitz a call.”

“No need, if that's all you wanted to ask him. The Padishah is in Washington with Ed Damon and that Standish Caplan fellow. I think the idea is to glue this treaty together in spite of the necklace being stolen. He's getting the red-carpet treatment. Meetings with bigwigs in the Administration, Pentagon, and so forth.”

“And Colonel Nagy?”

“Ah. He's back on Chappy. Came back from Boston by copter on Tuesday when his boss flew down to Washington. The Padishah's man in the hunt for the necklace.”

“And how are the forces of truth and justice doing?”

“Not so good. There is some new information, though. The autopsy report on Blunt just came in.”

“Death by gunshot wound to the head?”

“A 7.65 slug. One round fired from the gun in his hand, incidentally. The magazine was one short, so it was the round in the chamber. Went right up through Blunt's brain and lodged in the roof of the Jeep. Something else. Blunt was filled with cancer. Lucky to have lived long enough to kill himself.”

“Is that right?'

“It is. Now maybe we know why he shot himself.”

“Maybe. The bullet definitely came from that gun?”

“According to the FBI lab.”

“You're a fountain of information today, Chief. I'm impressed.”

“I'm tired of having half the cops in the world crawling around town. I want this case solved so I can get back to PCing drunks and listening to people complain about their parking tickets. I'm so desperate that I'm even talking to you.”

“Parking tickets!” I looked at my watch. “I gotta go!”

I was just in time. The meter maid was one car away when I got to the LandCruiser. I gave her a big smile, and she, being a nice college girl, smiled back. She wasn't mean; she just had a job to do. I drove down and got in line for the Chappy ferry. I was giving them a lot of business lately. I decided I'd charge it to my boss, just like my father, who had been a radio-drama fan, told me Johnny Dollar used to do. Jasper Cabot could afford to give me an expense account.

There was still a cop at the gate to the Damon place,
but he let me in. The helicopter was still sitting on the lawn. It costs a lot of money to keep a helicopter on hand like that, but the Padishah apparently had enough to manage it.

I got past the Thornberry man at the door and found Helga Johanson in the library with George. The tables were still covered with papers, and George was on the phone. It was hard to tell whether they'd made any progress on the case.

“I'm looking for Nagy,” I said.

“You're welcome to him,” said Helga. “He hasn't done one thing to help solve this case. He's around here somewhere. Upstairs, maybe, in the Padishah's suite.”

“I'll find him. How are you doing?”

“I'm ready for that evening out. We're on the last of the names on our lists. Not an honest suspect among them.”

I told her about the autopsy. She hadn't heard.

“Cancer. I'm not surprised. He didn't look like a well man.”

True. I told her about the Colonel's pistol. That interested her more.

“Does he still have his pistol?” I asked. “Would you know it if you saw it?”

“I never saw it,” she said. “I saw the holster on his uniform belt and I figured he carried one under his shirt when he was in civvies, but I never saw it. It would be interesting if he didn't have it now, wouldn't it.”

“I'm going to ask him about that right now. You want to come along?”

“I think I will,” she said.

“By the way,” I said. “I'd really like to know one thing. Last Saturday. Where did you carry your piece? I looked you over pretty well and I didn't see one bulge that didn't belong there.”

She gave me a sweet smile. “None of your business. A lady has to have some secrets. Shall we go?”

We went upstairs and down the hall to the Padishah's suite of rooms. Helga knocked on a door, and after a moment the door opened and Colonel Ahmed Nagy stood there. He was wearing summer trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. His dark mustache split his hatchet face in two.

He raised a brow above an expressionless eye. “Yes?”

“Mr. Jackson has some questions,” said Helga.

“Has he? Well, please come in.” He stepped aside. His words were polite, but his voice was like his face, dark and cutting. A voice like a saw, like a knife, like his profession.

We went in. There were soft chairs near an open window overlooking Edgartown Harbor. Through the window I could see the Edgartown waterfront beyond the anchored yachts. The spire of the old whaling church was clear and white. A large yawl was leaning into a gentle northeast wind as it tacked out past the town wharf. That same wind was soft and cooling as it rustled the curtains at the window. We sat down in the chairs.

“May I offer you wine?”

“I thought wine was not drunk by Muslims.”

“Ah, not by many, perhaps, but by me. Yours is said by some to be a Christian country, and though I see no great evidence of that save in the number of churches in your towns, perhaps I should quote your Saint Paul, who advised us to take a little wine for our stomachs' sake and for our oft infirmities. Or shall I cite the poet Khayyam, who held that since beautiful girls and wine were the promise of heaven they were also to be enjoyed on earth?” His hooded eyes were deep beneath his brows. “Or, perhaps,” he said, “you would like coffee. I have that too.”

“Nothing,” said Helga.

“Nothing,” I echoed.

“Then I will enjoy this vintage alone,” said Nagy, bringing a decanter and glass to a table beside his chair.
He gestured toward the window. “A lovely view. We have a few such yachts in Gwatar. They are like beautiful sea-birds. What are your questions, Mr. Jackson?”

“You have a pistol. I'd like to see it.”

His eyes floated toward Helga, then came back to me. “As you no doubt are aware, I have diplomatic immunity, Mr. Jackson. I need tell you nothing. May I ask why you're interested in my pistol?”

“Yes. Willard Blunt was shot to death with a 7.65 mm Beretta pistol manufactured for the Sarofimian military. It's not the sort of gun that's seen on Martha's Vineyard. If you don't have your pistol, it could be that yours was the one that killed Blunt.”

“Ah. And I might be a suspect in the killing. A murderer, perhaps.”

“Maybe. Can I see your pistol?”

He surprised me. “Of course.” He got up and went through a door on one side of the sitting room.

“Adjoining bedrooms on both sides,” said Helga, nodding at another door opposite the one Nagy had exited by. “I think that Zakkut and Youssef shared that room while they were here.”

I nodded. Zakkut, the Padishah's physician and political advisor, and Dr. Omar Youssef, the curator of the National Museum of Sarofim. Both now with the Padishah in Washington, I imagined. Nagy came back to his chair and handed me a pistol.

It was a Beretta 9 mm Parabellum. I dropped the clip out. Full. I snapped the slide back and a round popped into the air. Nagy's hand flashed, and he caught the bullet before it hit the floor.

“It's dangerous to hand loaded weapons to people,” I said.

“All weapons should be presumed to be loaded, Mr. Jackson.”

True enough. I looked at the pistol, then replaced the magazine and handed it back. “Is this the pistol you were
carrying when the Padishah nearly ran us down with his cigarette boat?”

“As I recall, Mr. Jackson, on that day you very gallantly stepped between me and the woman who had just pushed my master overboard. You had a look at my pistol then. What do you think now? Is this the weapon?”

“I don't know. I do know that this isn't one of the weapons that Beretta makes for the Sarofimian military.”

“My master's private security force is a branch of the Sarofimian military. We are armed with the standard weapons, I assure you. With exceptions, of course.”

“Such as this weapon for yourself?”

“Perhaps.”

“How do you think Willard Blunt happened to have a Sarofimian pistol?”