A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (26 page)

I sat back in my chair. “I'm not a cop and I'm not working for the cops, but I am working on the case. I know some people they don't know, so I may have some leads they don't have and know some things they may not know. One of the things I don't know is what this dead guy liked in the way of sex when he went on vacation. I thought maybe you could find out for me.”

She leaned forward. “Something kinky, you mean?” “I don't know what I mean. That's what I want you to tell me.”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it's probably not regular prostitutes, because there are regular prostitutes everywhere and I can't see why somebody would go to one of these places just to meet prostitutes. Unless he was such a snob that he only wanted to meet really expensive ones. And if that was the only criteria, he could have found some of them right at home, probably. Where did this guy live?”

“Boston.”

“Well, then, he wouldn't have had to leave town to find a really upper-class hooker. Maybe he didn't want to mess around in his hometown, where people might find out. Could that be it?”

“It could be that,” I said. “How does a wide-eyed little island girl like yourself know so much about hookers, anyway?”

She gave me a coy look. “Maybe I have a secret life.” “Gosh, Petunia, I never knew.”

She faked a sigh of regret. “Me neither. But I read the
Globe
and the
Herald,
and I watch the exposé shows on the tube, so I'm an expert. You think he did his whoring overseas because he was shy about cavorting with the girls at home?”

“I don't know. I know he was married for a while, and that after the divorce he dated some women from where he worked, and that he was engaged again just before he died. But I haven't picked up anything about him soliciting prostitutes.”

She stared at me, then at her desk, then at me again, smiled, and said, “I never tried to research anything like this before. It's a juicy question, though, and sure as hell a lot more interesting than booking little old ladies to Scottsdale, so I'll ask around. Maybe some people I know might know. Give me a couple of days and I'll see what I can find out about Playa de Plata.”

I went on to the A & P and battled the gathering late-morning crowd to get a few things I needed, then went home to do some cooking. Zee would be arriving in just a few hours, and, if I knew anything about her appetite, she'd be ready to eat a raw kangaroo. I planned to serve something better.

Sherry and garlic flounder, in point of fact. It was actually a shrimp recipe, but I had flounder in the freezer, so I used that instead. Like a lot of terrific recipes, it was so simple you wondered why you hadn't thought of it your-self before you read about it somewhere.

I greased a shallow baking dish, and put a couple of fair-sized fillets in it, then mixed up a half cup or so of olive oil, about half as much dry sherry, three crunched garlic cloves, about a half teaspoon of thyme, maybe a quarter teaspoon of crushed red peppers, and a bit of salt. I poured the mixture over the filets and put the dish in the fridge. Nothing to it.

When cooking time came, I'd put the fish in a 400-degree oven for eight or ten minutes, just until the fish was tender, then serve it over rice, with some homemade white bread, a bottle of sauvignon blanc, and a garden salad.
Très
haute cuisine from the kitchen of J. W. Jackson.

Joshua said he might have a little taste, and I told him he could if he wanted to.

Then I vacuumed the house, put clean sheets on the bed, and did a washing. When the washing was done, I hung everything out on the line in the solar dryer. It was a beautiful day, and I was feeling good when the phone rang.

It was Joe Begay.

“I have something for you,” said Begay. “I know some people who used to work for an outfit with interests over in Indonesia and thereabouts, where Carlson Bank and Trust has been doing business for lo these many years. My contacts know some old hands who were over there after the Big War, and those old hands know other people, and so on. You get the picture.”

What outfit? What interests?

“I get the picture,” I said, and Begay went on.

“One of the things people wanted to know in those days was whether Carlson B and T was tied with any of the governments we didn't like or with any of the criminal cartels that were getting started again after the war. Drugs, arms smuggling, piracy, money laundering. Stuff like that. Apparently it wasn't. People still keep an eye on the banks over there, of course, in case any of them have ties to, say, the export business out of the golden triangle. Carlson is clean as far as anybody can tell.”

“Which means,” I said, “that there's no evidence that Larry Ingalls ever had anything to do with the drug trade or any other sort of criminal activity that might have gotten him killed.”

“Right with Eversharp. So, when I learned that, I asked some people over there about his private life. And guess what, he did have a private life. You ever hear of a place called Silver Sands?”

“No. What about it?”

“It's a private island off the coast of Sumatra. All one
big luxury resort, no expense spared. One of several in different parts of the world run by the same outfit. Everything that money can buy and complete privacy guaranteed. The clientele is international: Asian, European, African, American, you name it. If you have the money and the right contacts, you can have your little bit of heaven on earth right there at Silver Sands, and go home a new man, ready to face the competition with a smile.”

I caught the new-man bit. “What about new women?” I asked.

“Ah,” said Begay. “There are women there, of course, and real beauties from what I'm told. But not many of them are customers. Almost all of the paying guests are men. Big business types, mostly, who want to get away from it all. Some politicos, too, and a few sheiks and kings and the like. There are a few well-heeled women with particular sexual tastes who show up, too, but they're the exception. Charles Lodge Ingalls introduced his boy Lawrence to the place when it was just getting off the ground in the seventies, and Lawrence liked it so much that after he got out of the banking business, he went back there alone once a year or so for vacations.”

It is a commonplace that some people prefer to have their sex with partners from races other than their own. The real or imagined exotic quality of such couplings gives them pleasure they can't otherwise achieve.

“So,” I said, “Lawrence Ingalls and his father both liked Oriental women, and could pay for the best. They stayed straight at home, and did their cavorting abroad. Quinn told me as much, although he didn't know about this Silver Sands place in particular. The only unusual thing about Silver Sands seems to be the amount of money you need.”

“Not quite,” said Begay. “There are female prostitutes at Silver Sands, of course, but there are males there, too, so you can have one of them, if you like. But the house specialty is children. Boys and girls of any age you prefer.
They're the real draw. Clients fly in from all around the world to visit them.”

“Ah.” If my brain had been a computer, it would have begun to hum and click.

Begay went on. “Silver Sands gets their kids from the parents, mostly. Poor people who need money so badly that they'll sell their children to whoever will pay the best price. Or sometimes the kids will sell themselves, because it's the only way they have to stay alive. It's a pretty common practice in any part of the world where there's a lot of poverty. All you have to do is read your
Globe
or
Herald
and you'll see the stories now and then. It's a kind of slave trade, and it goes on all the time, because there are terribly poor people all over the world and there's always a market for sex. The oldest profession, and all that.

“Now, in most of the brothels around the world, there's no such thing as safe sex; AIDS, for instance, is spreading in Asia and Africa like spilled milk. But Silver Sands is different. There, everybody you might want is clean, healthy, and well trained. You take your vacation at Silver Sands, you don't have to worry about taking HIV home with you. It's paradise, and worth every cent.”

I had read those stories Begay had mentioned. The UN and other agencies were always trying to stop the international trade in women and children, but to no avail. There were too many poor people in the world, and too many people willing to buy or sell them. Besides, you didn't have to go to some Third World country to find boys and girls selling themselves on the streets. You could find it happening in any city in the United States. Both kids and adults without jobs doing what they thought was necessary to stay alive.

I thought of the sympathy Dostoyevsky so often showed for prostitutes in his stories. He portrayed them as poor girls given no choice as to how they had to earn money, as angels more than as sinners. He had less charity for their customers, or those who had driven them to the streets.

What went on between consenting adults didn't concern me, but I was prude enough to think that children shouldn't be used that way.

I said, “Are you telling me that old man Ingalls and Lawrence Ingalls both liked children? That they were pedophiles?”

“Not girls,” said Begay. “Boys. Clean young boys. We don't approve of it over here in the U.S., but in other cultures it's not that unusual. I don't have to tell you that in some places men marry women so they can have children, but have boys for pleasure, and nobody thinks anything about it. If you called one of those men a pedophile, he'd say so what?”

Cultural ethics rearing its head once again. In the land of headhunters, hunting heads is not a sin.

“You're telling me that both Charles Lodge Ingalls and Lawrence Ingalls vacationed over there so they could have sex with boys?”

“I'm telling you that's what my sources tell me. And since the old man's still alive, I'd guess he still feels that way, although his sexual urges may have pretty much gone by now. He doesn't go abroad alone anymore, at least.”

“And his wife doesn't know about it?”

“I don't know what his wife knows. Wives tend to know a lot about their husbands, and they keep a lot of it to themselves.”

True. Like the cops and social workers and school-teachers who know all the dark secrets of their towns and keep most of that knowledge to themselves, wives and husbands often know things about their spouses that they never tell anybody. And maybe it is just as well.

“Who runs Silver Sands?” I asked.

“An outfit called Paradise International, Limited, based in Bern. They run resorts all over the world. Not just the Silver Sands kind, either, although they own others like it. They have some resorts for families, some for swinging singles, some for athletic types, some on shipboard, all kinds.
The only thing they all have in common is cost and quality. The best of everything but only for top dollar. No blue-haired widows in polyester on budget vacations. PI Limited is making regular deposits in those famous Swiss banks.”

When I'm irked, my voice is sometimes faster than my brain. “Sumatra's part of Indonesia, isn't it? Even Indonesia must have laws against child prostitution. And Switzerland is supposed to be squeaky clean. How does the Paradise International outfit get away with running places like Silver Sands?”

Begay laughed a small laugh. “You were a cop. How do those things work in Boston?”

Touché. In Boston or anywhere else, enough money in the right hands can buy you a lot of freedom. Paradise International had enough money to buy blind official eyes in a cash-hungry Third World country like Indonesia, and Switzerland wasn't going to close down a hometown outfit that fed big and mostly legit bucks into its banks.

“Well, well,” I said. “This is all very interesting. I just wonder if it has anything to do with Ingalls getting himself shot. You don't suppose some irate Indonesian finally tracked him down and knocked him off, do you?”

“No,” said Begay, “I don't.”

“Me, neither. One more thing, then. There's a resort in Costa Rica called Playa de Plata. Do you think some of your contacts with interests in that area of the world can find out something about the place?”

“I already know the name,” said Begay. “Playa de Plata means 'silver sands' in Spanish, and is owned by Paradise International. PI has another place near Mozambique called Silberstrand. You want me to check that one out, too?”

“I don't know anything about Silberstrand,” I said, “but Lawrence Ingalls went down to Playa de Plata between the time he stopped going over to Silver Sands and the time he built his house in Chilmark and stopped vacationing abroad.”

“I can tell you that all three places cater to the same crowds,” said Begay. “Megabucks clients, mostly male, but also the occasional woman who doesn't want to practice her private habits back home. You want particulars about Playa de Plata?”

It seemed to me I knew enough. It was tiring knowledge. “No, I guess not,” I said. “But if you happen to find out that some mad Costa Rican had it in for your pal Larry Ingalls, let me know.”

Begay sounded almost amused. “First, irate Indonesians, and now mad Costa Ricans, eh? Round up the usual suspects, Sergeant.”

I hung up the phone and got myself a Sam Adams. The beer was cool and seemed to lave away some of the fatigue I'd felt after talking to Joe Begay. I checked on sleeping Joshua, then went out onto the porch and looked at the sea and sky. I began to feel as though there had been dust on my brain, but that the dust was now being washed away, like a shower cleans Edgartown after a dry spell in the summer, leaving the buildings fresh and white and the air pure.

It seemed to me that I could almost see the truth about Lawrence Ingalls's death. That, in fact, I already had the information I needed, but, still looking through a glass darkly, I knew only in part what later, face to face, I would know even as I was known.