Ambrose had awoken to the heartbreaking sound of Hawke’s little airplane coughing and sputtering to life. When the noise came to resemble a screaming banshee outside his window, he sat up in bed, yawning, and pulled aside the curtain of the small rectangular port. He watched the silver plane lift off the water and climb into the nighttime sky.
Ambrose was keenly, painfully aware that Alex must know his search for Vicky’s body was hopeless. He also knew that Alex would be up there all day, flying every square mile of ocean within and beyond the search area, praying to find this woman who had seemed to offer him, finally, peace and passion.
He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
It was useless.
He picked up the brier pipe from his nightstand and jammed it between his teeth. It was both a comfort and a stimulant to thought. He realized despite the tragic events of the day, he was still poking around the edges of the thing that had haunted him for thirty-odd years.
He had slept fitfully, tossing and turning in his bed, unable to erase an image that simply would not go away. The image he saw was black-and-white and compelling. A simple composition. A story. A very old, sad story.
There were three figures in the foreground. A snowstorm of confetti and silver streamers filled the air. The photo was blurred as if some reveler had jostled the photographer at the moment the shot was taken.
Happy New Year.
A beautiful blond woman in a white sarong, diamonds sparkling around her regal white neck. A brilliant tiara in her hair. The woman had a flute of champagne in her raised hand and was smiling. Her other arm was thrown carelessly around the shoulders of a very fat young man with a bald, bullet-shaped head. A heavy golden crucifix was suspended from the thick gold chain around his neck.
There was another man in the foreground of the image. Tall and strikingly handsome in a spotless white dinner jacket, he stared directly into the eye of the beholder. The sober eyes were not amused. Fixed, impatient, not smiling.
For him, at least, this was not a very happy New Year.
Why?
Because the woman has had too much bubbly? Been too friendly with the bald-headed chap, perhaps. Said something indiscreet.
Ambrose sat bolt upright. He took a deep breath and looked out his oval port window. Overprinting the rippling black water, he saw the lingering image still, and now he had it.
The beautiful woman in Alex’s blurry Polaroid was Alex Hawke’s mother. The man in the dinner jacket was Alex’s father. And the fat youth with the golden cross? His large chunk of the puzzle was rapidly fitting into place, too.
Three Cuban boys on a murderous rampage.
Alex Hawke had handed him a key to the puzzle he’d been trying to solve for over thirty years.
Ambrose picked up the phone and called Sutherland’s cabin, waking him from a dead sleep. He told Ross to meet him on the bridge deck in ten minutes. Then he called Stokely and delivered the same message. He got up, padding quickly across his small cabin. He opened the door to the tiny head and stood before the sink, gazing at his haggard reflection in the mirror.
He was busily brushing his teeth when the magnitude of what was happening struck him like a blow to the head. He was standing at the very brink of solving the insoluble. The mystery surrounding the events aboard the yacht Seahawke that had occurred over thirty years ago.
Dressed, he shoved his service revolver, a pre-war nickel-plated Webley-Scott, into the side pocket of his favorite tweed jacket and headed for the bridge.
Sutherland and Stokely were already there.
“We’re going ashore,” Ambrose said. “Ross, please ask Tom Quick to select four of his best crewmen and arm them with automatic weapons. Stokely, do you need a gun?”
“I am a gun,” Stoke said, dead serious.
“Good. We might well put your talents to use then. Have everyone meet at the launch as quickly as humanly possible.”
“What is it, Constable?” Sutherland asked.
“Our first stop will be a surprise visit to Mr. Amen Lillywhite. If we find out what we need to know, there will be a second surprise party, quite possibly a highly charged affair.”
“We’ll be ready at the launch in ten minutes,” Sutherland said, and picked up the ship’s phone to begin assembling his team of raiders. It took less than a minute.
“Ross, do you have the Streetsweeper aboard?”
“Certainly.”
“Bring it,” Ambrose said, and left the bridge.
The Streetsweeper was Ross’s invention. It was a pistol-gripped, sawed-off shotgun capable of firing fifteen twelve-bore cartridges in less than twenty seconds. He had used it with much success in some difficult operations. He would carry it in addition to the matching flat Wilkinson throwing knives strapped inside each forearm.
Half an hour later, the launch arrived at the Staniel Cay docks. The small raiding party was armed to the teeth. It was just past four in the morning, still dark, and the entire island seemed to be sleeping. They still had the cover of darkness on their side. After disembarking, Ambrose posted one man on the dock to cover their escape if necessary.
The six remaining men moved swiftly toward the old club, bristling with weapons. All they knew was what Stokely had told them on the ramp. It was going to be a search and seizure, and it was most likely going to be a hot one.
The door of the club, not surprisingly, was open. There was a man sleeping atop the bar, snoring loudly. Ambrose considered waking him and reminding him of the club rules but disturbing him seemed unnecessary. He moved to the wall of photographs adjacent to the bar, pulling Alex’s Polaroid from his pocket and gazing up at the montage of overlapping snapshots. His eyes went to the upper left-hand corner where he’d seen a grouping of shots that had the appearance of being taken in the late seventies.
Two days ago, this had been a solid wall of photographs. Now, quite a few obvious patches of crumbling stucco revealed that a number of them had recently been removed. He looked at the picture in his hand, then placed it inside his jacket pocket. Satisfied, he turned to Sutherland and Stokely.
“All right, then. Two doors either side at the top of these stairs. Amen’s room is on the right,” Ambrose said. “At least, I saw him enter that room two nights ago. Ross, you and Stokely come with me. Tom, you and your fellows please remain down here unless you hear something disturbing upstairs.”
Ambrose was first up the steps. He waited for his two colleagues outside the bedroom door. Then he pulled out his revolver and stood back as Stokely kicked the old wooden door open. The force of his kick knocked the door off its hinges and sent it flying into the room.
A startled Amen sat bolt upright in his single iron bed, his eyes wide with surprise and fear.
“Good morning, Mr. Lillywhite,” Ambrose said, and walked straight toward him, his gun aimed at the naked man’s heart. Stoke and Sutherland stood just inside the doorframe, their weapons at the ready.
“What the—”
“Please be silent and listen,” Ambrose said. “I’m going to ask you a few very important questions. If I hear the right answers, no harm will come to you. You should know that I am a policeman and so are these gentlemen.”
Ambrose opened the small black leather case and showed the man his shield. “Are you ready?”
Amen, eyes on the gun, nodded his head.
“Good,” Ambrose said. “What is your name?”
“Amen, sir. Everybody knows that.”
“Your full name, please.”
“My name is Amen Lillywhite,” Amen said. “Named after my father.”
“Mr. Lillywhite, the very first time I visited this establishment, I noticed a number of particularly interesting snapshots on the wall downstairs. Some of them appeared to have been taken at a New Year’s Eve party in the early seventies. Tonight, I return only to find that many, if not all, of those particular pictures, have been removed. Any idea who might have taken them? Or why?”
“I don’t know,” Amen said. “I swear. So many pictures up there, I didn’t even notice they were missing.”
“You don’t have them?”
“No, sir. I don’t.”
“I believe you. Next question. Who is the owner of this establishment?”
Amen Lillywhite leaned back against the stained wall and shook his head.
“I am investigating a murder case for the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard,” Ambrose said. “If you withhold either evidence or information pertaining to this crime, you’re going to prison for a long, long time. Again, who is the owner of this club?”
“I don’t know anything. I just work for the man is all.”
“Give me his name. Now.” Ambrose pulled the hammer back on his revolver. It made a big impression.
“Don Carlo, that’s what he’s always been called ’round this little island. Just Don Carlo.”
“Did he remove the pictures?”
“I guess maybe he wanted some pictures taken down. Two days ago, Gloria ask me why Don Carlo seemed so upset about some pictures on the wall. Said he noticed one was missing. Said somebody had taken one. He told her to take some other ones down and burn them all out in the trash pit.”
“Did she do it?”
“I don’t think so. Don Carlo beat her up pretty badly one time she wouldn’t, uh, well, you know what I’m talking about. Ever since then, she don’t ever do what he say, less he standin’ right there watchin’ over her. Prob’ly, she hid the pictures in her room.”
“I hope so, for her sake. Destroying evidence related to a homicide investigation is a very serious offense.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“Good. How long has Don Carlo owned this club?”
“I guess thirty years or so. As a young man, he work for me tending bar. Only a month or so. Then he left without a word. One day he shows up again with a big wad of cash money and buys the place from my boss, Mr. Daniel Staniel was his name. Don Carlo, well, he’s what you call an international businessman. Big man. To him, this old club ain’t nothin’ but a hobby, like a—”
“Front for an international narco-terrorist operation. What is this man’s nationality?”
“You mean—”
“What is his country of origin?”
“You mean, where he was born, that would be Cuba. He and his brothers are big shots there. Military.”
“Their names?”
“Don Manso is one. The other he just calls Juanito.”
“Ah, yes,” Ambrose said, barely suppressing an urge to shout with joy at the mention of these two names.
Ambrose removed an envelope from his jacket and took out three folded and yellowed sheets of paper. He selected one and showed it to Lillywhite.
“Is this the man now known as Don Carlo, who worked for you thirty years ago?”
Lillywhite narrowed his eyes and said, “Yes, sir, that’s him.”
It was the police sketch Stubbs Witherspoon had given Ambrose on Nassau.
“Is this man on this island now?”
“Yes, sir. He live here most of the year. Spends a lot of time up in Cuba, too. But the man here now. Showed up yesterday.”
“Where does he live? His house, where is it?”
“Other side of the island. Over on the ocean side. Big place.”
“Guards?”
“Yes, sir. All the time.”
“Does the house have a name?”
“Finca de las Palmas.”
“Describe it.”
“Big white place. High stone walls all around it. Main gate at the top of the steps up from the beach road. Where de guard house is. Some big wooden gates round dere on de west side wall. House sits in a pine forest up high overlooking the sea. Nothing else round that place, sir.”
“Where is Don Carlo’s room?
“I ain’t been up there. But I think it’s third floor, overlooking the sea. He got a long balcony where I think he sleeps sometimes. Anyway, I’ve seen him up there in his pajamas, entertaining, you know? Fancy black iron railing up there.”
“Does he have a wife? Children in the house?”
“No, sir, he do not have no wife, no children.”
“There’s an old schoolbus parked outside the club.”
“Yessuh.”
“Run?”
“That’s my mother’s bus. She hauls kids to school in it every day. Calls it her bread and butter.”
“You have keys?”
“Yes, sir. ’Course I do.”
“Get dressed. You’re coming with us.”
“I ain’t done nothin’, sir, but tell you the Lord’s honest truth.”
“I’m taking you into protective custody until I can determine the truth of that statement.”
“Don Carlo, he see me with policemen, I’m dead.”
“He won’t get the chance to see you, Mr. Lillywhite. I’ll see to it that he does not. No harm will come to you or any member of your family.”
“You got to mind yourself with Don Carlo, Mr. Congreve. Real careful. Man is crazy. He ’bout bad as they get down in these islands. And they can get very bad.”
Lowering his weapon, Ambrose walked toward the empty doorframe, paused, and looked over his shoulder at the man still lying on the bed.
“You’re dealing with Scotland Yard, Mr. Lillywhite. Bad is our bread and butter.”