Afoot on St. Croix (Mystery in the Islands) (2 page)

Gedda

A HOT CARIBBEAN
sun shone down on the Christiansted harbor, baking the pink faces of the Danish tourists strolling across the boardwalk’s warped wooden pier. The motionless heat simmered over the flat water, a dry parching broil. A half mile in the distance, scattered waves broke along a crescent-shaped reef, the refreshing spray a cruel taunt to those sweltering on land.

The weather-beaten walkway curved around the harbor’s edge, passing a shabby collection of open-air restaurants, bars, and block-shaped hotels. A few overgrown lots and an abandoned nightclub added to the mix, the unkempt vacancies marring the downtown commercial area like gaps from missing teeth.

Beneath the shade of the nightclub’s front entrance, a pair of shirtless West Indians stared listlessly out at the blue horizon. The men’s shoulders slumped forward; their scabby limbs hung limply over the edge of the building’s exposed foundation. Their bodies lacked any sign of animation—until the Danes approached.

Suddenly, the men sprang to life, calling out to the blond-headed tourists while wildly gesturing to a pile of green coconuts gathered on the litter-strewn concrete.

“Ay, you dere! Ya gut ta cum see deese feresh coco-nuts. We picked dem jes’ fer you!”

Raising the ragged edge of a machete, one of the vendors scooped up a round nut and expertly lopped off its top.

His partner quickly plunked a plastic straw through the opening and offered it to the nearest Dane for a sampling taste.

With an embarrassed grin, the hapless European tried to demur, but the pair persisted.

Gingerly, the Dane brought the straw to his mustached lips and took a tentative sip. After swallowing a small dose of the watery liquid, he glanced up from the straw with a grimace.

The warm juice felt thick on his tongue, but he swallowed his dislike of the drink. The coconut vendors leaned toward him, eagerly awaiting his verdict.

An uneasy shadow crossed the Dane’s eyes as his face hardened with disapproval.

We should have never sold this place
, he thought to himself.
Look at what the Americans have done to it.

After an awkward moment of silence, the Dane reached for his wallet.

“Mmm,” he announced loudly but in an unconvincing tone. “That is . . .
fan-tastic
.”

• • •

TOWARD THE BOARDWALK’S
east end, the yellow ochre walls of Fort Christiansvaern gleamed in the sunlight. The signature landmark in a small park commemorating St. Croix’s colonial past, the refurbished Danish stronghold was in far better shape than many of the island’s modern-day constructions.

Nearby, a barrier of red construction webbing surrounded the Customs House, a structure of similar vintage that was just beginning the updating process. At the far edge of the grounds, not far from a taxi stand and the park’s public restrooms, the smaller Scale House stood graying with mildew and rot. The third in line for refurbishments, this building would have a while to wait for its beautifying treatment.

A dozen or so chickens scratched in the dry grass outside the fort’s imposing walls, their beaks vigorously pecking for grubs. Hens fussed over their chicks, clucking anxiously to keep them from straying, while cagy roosters eyed one another, puffing out their feather-covered chests and haughtily preening their silky black plumes.

A flurry of loud
squawks
broke the air as an olive-skinned man in a cropped T-shirt, running shorts, and sneakers jogged from the boardwalk’s terminus onto the park’s open green space.

The birds scattered, jumping out of the runner’s path. Unfazed by the avian commotion, the man proceeded toward a white-painted gazebo in the center of the wide lawn and thunked up its wooden steps.

Stooping, the man spread a stack of laminated sheet music across the gazebo’s splintered floor, carefully arranging the pages in numerical order. Once he had the papers in place, he stood and turned to face the harbor.

Stripping off his T-shirt, he rolled his shoulders to loosen his joints. The afternoon sun angled beneath the gazebo’s roof, splashing across the man’s chest to reveal a series of elaborate tattoos depicting scenes from Dante’s
Inferno
. The masterpiece of ink art covered his upper torso, wrapped over his shoulders, and crept down his back. Howling demonic figures clawed out from his tanned skin, the images forever frozen in their desperate attempt to escape the torture chamber of searing flames.

The tattoos, it turned out, were a visual aid, meant to inspire the man’s vocal performance.

After a few trilling warm-up scales, he began to sing. His voice, wobbly at first, grew in strength and volume as he belted out the opening stanzas of an Italian opera. Throwing his arms wide, his now pitch-perfect tenor floated across the water, a pleasant if strangely incongruous sound.

Seemingly comforted by the music, the chickens settled in around the gazebo and resumed their pecking.

• • •

YET ANOTHER REMNANT
from the Danish colonial era dotted the boardwalk at its midway point, well outside the bounds of the fort’s sanctioned historical site. The cylindrical base of a windmill once used to crush sugarcane studded the shoreline, its round tower a beacon for arriving mariners with a strong—and preferably indiscriminate—alcoholic thirst.

For the small boats that moored in the Christiansted harbor, many serving as their occupants’ full-time residences, it was but a few short strides across the boardwalk’s width to the windmill’s rustic bartending station.

A counter cut into the curving coral-rock wall allowed beers to be passed from coolers stored in the circular interior to a line of stools ringing the outside. Rudimentary mixed drinks were also available, the most popular being the island’s signature Confusion cocktail of flavored Cruzan rum and pineapple juice. The sweet liquid, often chilled with a few chips of ice, was served in the standard plastic cups used for cheap drinks throughout the Caribbean.

•

IT HAD BEEN
a slow afternoon, the flip-flop-wearing bartender thought as he leaned his tall body over the windmill’s counter and rested his chin in his hands. The stools on the counter’s opposite side were empty, perhaps due to the heat—perhaps due to the overenergetic a cappella performance under way at the gazebo down by the Danish fort. The robust singing could be heard all along the boardwalk.

“Umberto’s in rare form today,” the bartender mused, tilting his head to listen to the powerful crescendo of Italian.

The bartender didn’t mind these daily singing sessions, an opinion that put him in the minority among the boardwalk’s regulars.

He found the music cleared his mind—it made him think less about his last cold shower from the rain catchment outside his shack of an apartment, and more about his next day off, when he would spend several hours relaxing on the sailboat his girlfriend captained for one of the local dive shops.

He was a lucky man, he thought as he stared sleepily at the collection of watercraft floating in the harbor. He lived on an island, he had a low-key, stress-free job, and he’d found the perfect girl.

She possessed the two essential features he looked for in a woman: she was attractive, with an island girl’s ruffled, sun-kissed mystique, and, even more important, she had easy access to a boat.

•

THE BARTENDER YAWNED,
shaking loose his daydream, as a rusted shopping cart bumped toward his counter.

“Hey there, Gedda,” he said softly, nodding at the withered old woman pushing the cart onto the boardwalk from the gravel courtyard behind his bartending station.

He didn’t expect a response. Everyone knew the hag’s hearing was almost gone. Years of constant exposure to the sun and hard liquor had presumably fried her mental faculties.

She looked like a walking corpse; the calloused surface of her dark skin had toughened into a dingy gray shell. She moved with a pronounced limp, caused primarily by her lame left foot, which dragged stiffly across the boardwalk’s uneven planks.

Gedda’s heavyset figure was dressed in layers of rags. The loose-hanging folds of cloth obscured the shape of her limbs—particularly her deformed left foot—which she’d covered with an old floppy shoe.

•

THE HOMELESS HAG
was a constant presence in downtown Christiansted, hovering silently around the edges of activity, lurking in the narrow cobblestone alleys leading inland from the boardwalk.

Most nights, she could be found hanging around the Dumpsters behind the boardwalk’s busier restaurants. The waitstaff would scrape their best-looking leftovers into foam containers and leave the packages perched on top of the easiest-to-reach refuse heap.

No one ever saw the woman move the containers to her cart, but within seconds, the food always disappeared.

•

WHERE GEDDA WENT
after she left the Dumpsters was anyone’s guess, but the bartender suspected that she had been sleeping inside the Danish fort. Twice, he’d seen her hobbling out from behind the corner of its nearest harbor-facing wall. Both instances had occurred early in the morning, before the park service employees had arrived to open the front gates.

Gedda had either stumbled across a secret entrance or, he reasoned, someone in the park service was leaving a back door open for her.

The old woman’s digs were probably nicer than his own, the bartender thought with a sigh as the hag left her cart and hobbled toward the windmill’s counter.

“You thirsty, Gedda?” he asked, reaching for a plastic cup.

She shuffled the last few feet to the bar as he measured out twice the normal dose of rum and dumped it into the container.

Topping off the drink with a splash of pineapple juice, he gave the woman a conspiring smile, set the cup on the counter, and turned his back to fiddle with a plastic cooler on the far side of the windmill’s round room.

•

GEDDA’S CLAWED HAND
immediately reached for the cup. Her grip shaking, she brought the flimsy plastic rim to her chapped lips. Tilting her head back, she took a long gulp, draining half the volume in a single swill.

Her creased eyelids closed as she savored the familiar burn on her throat. She rocked back and forth, relishing the temporary numbness the drink brought to her aching, arthritic body.

But the moment of solace was soon interrupted.

Gedda’s bloodshot eyes popped open at the distant buzz of the two-o’clock seaplane arriving from Charlotte Amalie.

She watched the plane putter across the sky above the harbor, circle the soot-stained towers of the power plant on the bay’s west side, and descend smoothly toward the water.

As the tiny aircraft made its final approach to the buoy-demarcated runway, the old woman’s vision honed in on one of the faces peering out of the plane’s oval-shaped windows.

“Char-lee Bak-ah,”
Gedda said with a crooked smile that revealed several chipped teeth. Her voice cracked with eerie delight.

“Wel-cum back ta San-ta Cruz
.
”

Her grip now much steadier, she lifted the cup as if toasting the seaplane and then downed the remainder of the rum cocktail in a single gulp.

The Seaplane

CHARLIE BAKER CLENCHED
the armrests bolted to his seat as the seaplane tilted into its last turn above the Christiansted harbor. The sideways motion churned his stomach; the tight rotation skewed his center of balance. He gulped and blinked his eyes, trying to straighten his vision.

As the plane skimmed over the water, Charlie glanced skeptically out the nearest portal, expecting the worst. It was his third trip to St. Croix since Thanksgiving, and each landing had been more precarious than the one that came before.

The pilot steadied the craft for its final approach, leveling the wings. The plane dropped through the air, now in a rapid descent toward the harbor.

Charlie muttered to himself.

“I must be crazy for coming back here.”

•

DESPITE THE PERILOUS
nature of his last few arrivals into the Christiansted harbor, Charlie still preferred the seaplane to the commercial airliner that flew between St. Thomas and St. Croix.

The seaplane was far more convenient, with minimal security screening and an abbreviated check-in process. Plus, the plane’s terminus points were within a short walking distance of the downtown areas of both Christiansted and Charlotte Amalie.

Up until last summer, a commuter ferry had serviced the route, but Charlie wouldn’t have considered that an option even if the boat had still been in operation.

The ferry had been a notoriously unreliable means of transport, frequently canceling its runs due to weather concerns or high seas. In addition, the boat took almost twice as long as the seaplane to traverse the forty-mile distance between the islands. Even on the best of days, the ride had been extremely bumpy, only recommended for those with seaworthy stomachs—a qualification that Charlie did not meet.

Despite having lived in the Caribbean for the last ten years, Charlie was still ill at ease on the water. Earlier that morning, he’d taken a short boat ride from his home base of St. John across the Pillsbury Sound to Red Hook on the east end of St. Thomas. That brief boating session had given him all the bumping and bobbing action he could handle for one day.

Regardless, the St. Croix ferry service had been out of commission since the previous July, when the boat ran aground on one of the cays near St. Thomas. The accident had occurred while the passengers—and apparently the ship’s captain—were watching a local fireworks display.

The official investigation into the cause of the incident had been inconclusive as to blame, but the ferry company had so far been unable to raise funds for a new vessel, leaving the seaplane as the main means of inter-island transport connecting St. Croix to its sister Virgin Islands.

•

A SHEEN OF
water sprayed against the aircraft’s metal body as its bottom booms skimmed the sea’s surface. Charlie stared nervously out the droplet-covered window, his stomach tightening with apprehension.

It wasn’t the actual landing he was afraid of—in most instances, a seaplane’s transition from air to water was remarkably smooth.

It was the showdown.

As the booms dug into the water, kicking up waves, Charlie spied a small dinghy anchored near the protective reef that circled the harbor. The pilot began to swear, his irate words easily traveling from the front of the plane into the passenger cabin.

“Here we go,” Charlie muttered, bracing his shoulders against the back of his seat.

A second later, the seaplane took a sudden jerking turn, sending it skidding outside the marked runway, only partially under the pilot’s control.

Holding his breath, Charlie leaned toward the center aisle, angling his head to look out the pilot’s front windshield. The narrow view captured a chaotic scene as the plane careened wildly toward a sailboat that had just entered the harbor.

Charlie caught a brief glance of the sailboat’s wide-eyed captain, a young woman who worked for one of the Christiansted dive shops. Cursing, she spun the boat’s wooden steering wheel, helpless to avoid the oncoming plane.

A second slew of expletives exploded from the cockpit as the seaplane made yet another abrupt evasive maneuver. The plane swung into a sharp curve, this time whipping around to face the marked runway.

There, floating in the middle of the lane, was the obstacle that had caused the plane’s initial swerve.

A rogue swimmer raised a clenched fist above his snorkel mask, emphasizing his triumphant gesture with the point of a fishing spear before diving back beneath the water’s surface.

The pilot’s exasperated howl echoed through the cabin.

“One of these days, I’m just going to run him over!”

•

CHARLIE SHOOK HIS
head, thankful to have survived another landing, as the plane motored toward its dock.

The standoff between the spear fisherman and the seaplane had been going on for months, but the dispute had escalated in recent weeks. The stretch of water demarcated as the seaplane’s landing zone had apparently become a prime hunting ground for lobster, and the spear fisherman was unwilling to disrupt his lobster pursuit to accommodate the plane’s landing schedule. That the practice was illegal appeared to have little bearing on the matter. In any event, the spear was pointed more frequently at the seaplane than the lobsters, the fisherman preferring to corral his catch into live traps.

As the captain’s bitter mutterings continued to spew out of the cockpit, Charlie turned toward the passenger seated beside him, a traveling salesman he’d met before their takeoff from Charlotte Amalie.

Charlie gave the man a knowing look, raised his thick eyebrows, and groused cynically.

“Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase
clear the runway
.”