The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

Brian Silverman BREADFRUIT ^{from Mystery Tribune}

I read somewhere that breadfruit is one of the new superfoods. They say it contains “high-quality protein.” Not that I have a clue what differentiates high-quality protein from low-quality protein. I do know that here on St. Pierre they have been eating breadfruit well before it was officially deemed a superfood. I’ve eaten it enough here myself, and superfood or not, I prefer a potato, which it resembles somewhat in taste, but a potato most likely has low-quality protein. So when I saw the two large green globes of breadfruit patterned with round bumps on its skin on the counter of my bar, I was not excited. I was, however, very much puzzled.

I was outside in the back of the bar I ran on St. Pierre called the Sporting Place. It was the middle of the day, a slow Tuesday, and I didn’t expect any customers for a couple of hours. I was working on the foundation for a small addition to my bar, adding another five hundred square feet. Since I had owned the piece of land and built the sports-themed bar five years ago, business had grown. There were times when I just couldn’t handle the overflow crowds, like when the Windward Islands All Star cricket team was playing Barbados for the Caribbean title—and when I held an impromptu fete for local calypso legend Lord Ram as he lay dying in St. Elizabeth Hospital. There was space in the backyard of the bar for the addition. I was overdue to expand and had put it off long enough, but I was in no rush. I was in no rush for anything, which was one of the reasons I was living on the Caribbean island of St. Pierre. There were other reasons, but the only one I cared about at the moment was that there was no rush to finish the addition.

It was when I took a break from my work and went inside to grab a bottle of water that I noticed the breadfruit on the bar. I looked around but knew there was no one in the bar. I hadn’t heard anything or anyone while I was working in the back. I took a step out of the front entrance and looked down the road to see if anyone was walking by or had just left. In the distance I saw a dark figure running down the slope of the road. The runner, whose face I could not recognize from the almost 150-yard distance, turned back toward where I stood and then continued to run, his pace quickening. I watched as he disappeared from my sight, turning right onto Victoria Highway, a fully paved, two-way flat of street that on St. Pierre constituted a highway and led into the island’s capital and main port, Garrison.

I went back into the bar and examined the breadfruit. Picked one up in my hand. Its flesh was pliant, and it seemed a little lighter than I recalled a breadfruit being. I ran my thumb over the circular bumps on the green skin of the fruit. I picked up the other. They were almost identical in size and shape, and its weight was the same as the other’s. Maybe they needed more time on the breadfruit tree to ripen. What did I know about breadfruit? I put them back where I found them.

Tubby Levett came in about an hour later. I was out in the backyard again, now cleaning the hollowed-out oil canister we used as a smoker. “You see the two breadfruit on the bar?” he said to me, one foot in and one foot out of the doorway.

I looked up from my work. “I did,” I replied.

He remained in his position straddling the back door. He was waiting for an explanation. When he realized he wasn’t going to get one, he went back into the bar to help set up for the rush-hour crowd. When I say crowd, I mean never more than half a dozen to a dozen in the bar for a Tuesday.

“You want those breadfruits?” I asked Tubby when I came back into the bar, where he was assembling clean glasses on top of the bar.

“What I’m gonna do with more breadfruit?” He shook his head. “My ma has a tree behind the house. The breadfruit fall all year from that tree. We don’t need no more breadfruit. But I wanna know who that is who bring you the breadfruit?”

“I’d like to know that too, Tubby.”

He looked at me as if I wasn’t telling him something or was playing a joke on him. I didn’t know what I could say to him to make him believe that I really didn’t know who brought the breadfruit into the Sporting Place. I didn’t tell him about the runner I saw. What was there to tell, and what did the man running down West Road have to do with the breadfruit? Tubby, who was usually very gregarious, went about his work close-lipped. He thought I was putting something over on him and wasn’t happy about it. He thought I was busting his balls, which, I admit, I did now and then.

“Seriously, Tubby, those breadfruits just appeared there this afternoon. I’m not making that up.”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled, not looking at me.

The two breadfruit remained where I found them on the bar when Adolphus Grainey came in for his daily, excluding Sunday, afternoon beer. Grainey was a tall, very thin, very dark-skinned man who worked up at the base of the national park surrounding Mount Hadali, St. Pierre’s centuries-dormant volcano, as one of the groundskeepers. He was in his late sixties, I think, and lived alone in a small house about a mile down the road toward Garrison. His wife died several years ago, before I arrived on the island, and he mentioned to me that he had a married daughter who lived in Toronto and a son working in Trinidad.

He took his usual seat on the bar and examined the breadfruit while I opened a cold Carib beer for him.

“You want them, they’re yours,” I said to him.

He nodded, holding one in his hand. “A light one,” he muttered. “I roast them with a little butter and salt.”

“Do whatever you like with them,” I said.

“Thank you, Mr. Len,” he said to me as he put them in the canvas satchel he carried along with the sharp cutlass he needed for his work clearing the brush that was constantly encroaching on the groomed grounds of the national park.

Though my first name is Len, I had assumed the name here on St. Pierre by many as “Mr. Len.” No matter how many times I politely said just to call me Len, it always came out Mr. Len. I wasn’t sure if it was a sign of respect, the inability to properly pronounce my last name, Buonfiglio, or maybe the people of St. Pierre just were not comfortable calling me by my last or first name without a proper title attached. It had a colonial, plantation, antebellum feel to it whenever anyone addressed me that way, and it bothered me each time I was called that, but I had long since given up correcting them when they addressed me. Even Tubby, who wasn’t tubby at all—in fact there probably wasn’t more than an ounce of fat on his lean, muscular frame—and who was my right-hand man at the Sporting Place, called me Mr. Len. And he called me that later in the evening, when I was out in the back of the bar organizing what I planned for the bar extension work the next day.

“Mr. Len,” Tubby said, poking his head out of the back door. “A man here who say he want to have a talk with you.”

Tubby kept looking at me. He was gesturing in some way, trying to tip me off about the man, but I wasn’t picking up his meaning. I put down what was in my hands and went into the bar.

The man at the bar was our only customer seated at the bar; Thomas Griffin and Marvin Toon, two friends who worked at the Karime Rum distillery, the island’s lone rum distillery, were seated at a table, bottles of Carib in front of them, and deep in discussion.

When I entered, the man turned to me and smiled. He wore tinted glasses even in the dimly lit bar; his dark hair was long and lank and he wore it wrapped in a bun with a scrunchy like a woman would on his head. A man bun. I’d seen other men do that to their long hair in New York—especially in Brooklyn, for some reason. In my opinion it looked silly, but who was I, with not much remaining hair on my own head, to judge what a man does with his hair. This man was very thin and wore a flowered, colorful short-sleeved shirt loose that hung over his beige khakis. As I got closer I could see that his yellowish brown skin was pockmarked. I also saw the tattoo near the back of his neck, just a bluish blur that looked more like a bad bruise than anything else. I couldn’t tell how old he was; anywhere from thirty to fifty. “Joseph Arjoon here,” he said, extending his hand. “And you are Mr. Buonfiglio, though from what I’ve learned also known as Mr. Len.”

“That’s what they call me here,” I replied, trying again not to make claim to how I was addressed. I took his hand; it was a small, bony hand, but I didn’t disrespect him by squeezing it too hard.

“Wonderful spot you have here,” he said in a formal Caribbean lilt. Like others I met from some of the islands, he was a mix of many races. I could see East Indian in him, Chinese, some remnant was there of an indigenous race, and maybe even a trace of Spanish nobility. But he didn’t look like he was from St. Pierre, where most of the locals were dark-skinned descendants of African slaves. And his very proper British Caribbean inflection belied his, to be frank, somewhat thuggish appearance.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Arjoon?” I said, moving behind the bar. He spun on his stool to face me, the smile still wide and revealing teeth that looked like they hadn’t seen a dentist in decades.

“I’m a businessman from Guyana,” Arjoon said. “Here on this tropical paradise of yours, or should I say, an island you’ve adopted, to do some business.”

There was excess water on the polished mahogany bar in front of him. I wiped it down with a towel. I wondered what more he knew about me. “And what is your business?” I inquired.

He sipped from a bottle of Heineken and then put it down. Adjusting his tinted glasses and looking me in the eye, he said, “Breadfruit.”

I froze for just a moment, and then realized Arjoon was studying my reaction to what he just said. I resumed wiping the bar, now trying not to look caught unawares, making sure my expression remained stoic as it was before he made his proclamation.

“I didn’t know there was much of a business in breadfruit,” I said, keeping my head down on the work I was doing.

“Oh, but there is, Mr. Buonfiglio. You would be surprised.” He swiveled his beer bottle with his fingers as he talked. “Breadfruit, which we have in abundance on Guyana, has been classified by some as a new superfood. The world is just now beginning to realize its many health benefits.”

“Yeah, I heard it has high protein,” I said with a smile.

He returned my smile, keeping the eyes behind those tinted glasses on me. “So you do know something about breadfruit. But did you know that breadfruit has more potassium than a banana? Do you know what that means?”

“I don’t, Mr. Arjoon.”

“The more potassium, the better the blood flow. It helps those blood vessels relax. In other words, Mr. Buonfiglio, breadfruit does wonders for high blood pressure.”

I tried to act amused and smiled back at him. “Well, if I have any problems in that area, I will make sure to load up on my breadfruit intake.”

He laughed into his beer. “You do look fit and healthy. Island life, it seems, has been good for you.”

I said nothing. This was getting a little too cute for me. He was talking but saying nothing.

Realizing my patience was beginning to wane, he went on with his pitch. “Now I’m sure you know that the climate here on St. Pierre is, as on Guyana and so many of these beautiful islands, also conducive to the cultivation of breadfruit.”

“Yeah, the trees are everywhere,” I said bluntly.

“And we can thank Captain Bligh for them,” he said.

I looked at him. “What?”

“Captain Bligh. The mutiny on the Bounty. You know the story, don’t you?”

“What’s the mutiny on the Bounty got to do with breadfruit?” I asked, vaguely remembering the plot of the movie of the same name.

“Well, if Bligh’s vessel wasn’t mutinied, maybe the breadfruit plants he went to fetch in Tahiti would have gotten to these islands sooner,” Arjoon said. “And maybe the fruit would have been accepted more readily in Western society. It’s a marvelous story. So good they’ve made three movie versions of it.”

“Yeah, didn’t they make one with Marlon Brando? And he ended up with one of those Tahitian girls?” I asked.

He sipped his beer and laughed into it. “That he did, Mr. Buonfiglio. It’s funny how the local girls seem attracted to the white westerner.” He looked at me. How much more did he know about me? I wondered. “Anyway, that was one version. Before that it was Clark Gable playing Fletcher Christian and the great Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh. The most recent, called The Bounty, starred Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins as Bligh. Can you imagine three movies where breadfruit is a central plot device?”

“I thought it was the mutiny,” I said, not knowing really what I was talking about but trying to make conversation about this nonsensical subject.

“That’s a matter of opinion, Mr. Buonfiglio. I like to think that it was the breadfruit that propelled the action. There would be no voyage, no mutiny if it weren’t for the task of returning to the West Indies with breadfruit plants. And to show his resilience, after being tossed from his vessel by his crew and then navigating himself to safety, Bligh was promoted to captain and sent back to Tahiti once more for breadfruit plants.”

“He didn’t get mutinied again, did he?” I asked, suddenly actually curious.

“No.” Arjoon smiled. “He was successful in bringing back a few hundred plants to St. Vincent and then Jamaica. And now look. As you said. The trees are everywhere.”

I nodded. “They are. And?”

“And a man who can harvest the fruit and export it to other countries to meet the growing demand overseas can make himself a lucrative business.”

“Is that what you do, Mr. Arjoon?” I leaned back against the bar, my arms folded across my chest, now looking him in the eye. I wanted him now to know that we were communicating without the bullshit he was spewing. That I knew that he was playing with me.

“Something like that,” he said. He went into the pocket of his flowery shirt and pulled out a business card. “We can discuss my business further if you like, at your convenience. That is my mobile number. I will be staying at LuJean’s Guest House for the evening.”

“LuJean’s?”

“Yes, I hear she makes a delicious breakfast for her guests. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Breadfruit pudding?” Even I knew about her famous breakfast.

He laughed loudly, his smile again showing off those sorry teeth. “Oh yes… it has quite the reputation, doesn’t it?”

With that he slid his bony frame off the barstool and made his way to the front entrance. I thought he might turn around and smile again at me, but he didn’t.

I waited a few moments behind the bar to make sure he wouldn’t come back in and then I made my way to the door. Tubby was right behind me. Both of us saw the black Lexus SUV pull out of the small parking lot and head down West Road toward Garrison.

“Someone in that car waiting,” Tubby told me as we stood at the doorway. “It was running all the time that man in here.”

“I know,” I said.

Tubby saw the concern on my face.

“What’s going on? What that man say to you?”

“I’m really not sure.” I paced a bit, moving from the front entrance again to the bar and back, peering into the dark quiet of West Road.

Toon and Griffin stopped their discussion to look at me. Neither said anything. They were waiting for my next move. I was waiting for my next move. I had suspicions, but that was all. And even if my suspicions were real, this was all new to me. I was a bar owner. I knew cops back in New York. They came to my bars. I talked to them. But I wasn’t a cop. And those cops were not on this island. Something was pushing me forward here. I knew I had to act, but I didn’t know how, or really what to do or why. In New York, even if I had suspicions of something not right, I wouldn’t have done a thing. Here, though, it was different. Here I felt a responsibility I never felt before.

“Where does Grainey live?” I asked Tubby, a sick feeling rising up in my belly.

“Grainey? The man was here earlier,” Tubby said, surprised by my question.

I grabbed the keys to my jeep. “Where does he live? Is he near the turnaround past the Blue Tyre Shop?”

Tubby sensed my urgency. He shook his head. “No, not that far down de road. Grainey, he live two house from the LeGrande Miracle Church. The house with the green door. Why you want to find Grainey?”

I didn’t answer. I was out the door and into my jeep. I could see Tubby, along with Toon and Griffin, standing in the doorway, watching. Wondering.

I was wondering too. I had no idea what I was doing. But I had an idea what I would find. And I didn’t think it would be good.

I saw the flashing lights in the darkness of a St. Pierre night from almost a mile away. All I had to do was follow them and I knew I would find Adolphus Grainey too. I had a feeling of dread that reminded me of what I anticipated that June morning back in New York. When I felt the ground shake under my feet.

They had just gotten him into the ambulance when I pulled up. A police car was next to the ambulance, and Superintendent Keith McWilliams was there talking to another policeman I recognized as Albert Haines. They stopped their conversation when they saw me arrive.

“What happened to Grainey? Did someone do something to him?” McWilliams, who was very tall, thick in the chest, dark-skinned with bloodshot eyes, said nothing for a moment.

“Why would you say that, Mr. Len?” he said to me in his deep, sleepy voice.

“The ambulance. This is his house, isn’t it?” I gestured.

“Yes, but why do you ask if someone did something to him?” I realized my error and was impressed that McWilliams, who, working as a policeman in St. Pierre for so long and not having to do much detective work, quickly picked up on my blunder.

I shrugged. “Why would the police be here if not,” I muttered, hoping to cover up my carelessness.

He nodded slowly, still examining me. “It seems so, Mr. Len. He got beat up pretty bad. You don’t know anything about this, do you?”

“Me? No… I was driving down to Garrison and saw the lights. Grainey is a friend. He stops into the Sporting Place almost every day.”

McWilliams nodded. He was looking again for any hesitation or doubt. He was looking for the truth. And the truth was, I didn’t know what was going on. All I had were hunches.

“Today?” McWilliams asked, keeping his unwavering eye on me.

“He was in today,” I responded, with a nod.

“Did he say anything to you about someone after him? Was there anything different about today that you noticed?”

Yes, there were two breadfruits on my bar, which appeared out of nowhere. And I gave them to him. A few hours later a man appeared, inquiring about a breadfruit business. A man not from St. Pierre who had bad skin, bad teeth, a tattoo on his neck, and wore his hair in a male hair bun. That’s what I probably should have told Superintendent McWilliams, but I didn’t. What I muttered instead was a barely comprehensible “No… nothing.”

“Poor Mr. Grainey… he de kindest man.” All of us turned to see Netty Langford, covered in an old robe, thick glasses that were slightly crooked, and a net over her thin gray hair. She had been right behind us, listening to our conversation. “And de man stop by my house just a couple of hours ago.”

“You say you were with him tonight?” McWilliams said to her in his deep, slow delivery.

“Before dark. I was in the yard tidying… he stopped to chat. We chat for just a little while and den he say he need to fix he supper. I offered to fix something for he, but de man, he never say yes to dat. Just a supper is all I offer he. Why de man think I want something else?” She looked at the three of us.

“Did you see or hear anything from his house after he left?” McWilliams asked her.

She thought for a moment. “I had the radio on… my hearing…” Her eyes, through those thick lenses, looked hurt, ashamed that her minor handicap prevented her, in some small way, from helping. “Why would someone hurt him? Please say de man recover?”

McWilliams looked down. “We certainly hope he will,” he mumbled.

The ambulance sped off to St. Elizabeth Hospital, its siren blaring through the otherwise quiet night. I could see Netty Langford staring at it with worried eyes. “Jesus take care of the good,” she muttered, and then she turned and shuffled back to her house.

I watched as she went back into her house. McWilliams turned to me. “I trust, Mr. Len, I will hear from you if you have any information for me.” His red-rimmed, almost hound-dog eyes were boring into me.

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll do anything to help you find who did this to Grainey.”

I waited in my jeep, pretending to talk on my cell phone, until McWilliams’s police car left, and then I got out. I walked over to Netty Langford’s house and knocked on her door. There was harmonic gospel playing from a radio. It was loud enough to be heard from outside. Through the screen door I could see her in her small living room, her Bible in her hand as she sat in her chair. I knocked again and she got up, turning toward the door. “It’s me, Mrs. Langford,” I said. “Len from the place up the hill.”

“Yes,” she said, slowly rising from her chair and turning to me. “Come in then.”

I pushed the screen door open and entered. The kitchen was just to the right of the living room, the two rooms separated by a thin linoleum black-and-white-checkered walkway. There was a small round dining room table on the side of the room of the kitchen with three chairs around it. On top of the table were the two breadfruits I had given Adolphus Grainey.

“Grainey gave those to you?” I asked, looking at her as she made her way slowly to me.

“He did. De man such a kind one.” She shook her head. “He say he get dem on the way back from his work. I tell him I don’t need breadfruit, but he insist.”

I thought about what had happened. What Grainey did. Or really, what he didn’t do. What he must have endured by saying nothing. He knew what they were after, but he was protecting his neighbor. My eyes seemed to narrow as I realized more and more of what was going on. I had long ago learned to keep my mouth shut even when I wanted to roar. This was one of those moments. It took all I had to remain calm in front of Netty Langford. I picked one of the breadfruits up in my hand and then the other.

“Mrs. Langford, do you mind if I take these?” I asked, knowing my request would most likely puzzle her.

She laughed. “You can have dem. Dey no good anyway. I don’t know where Mr. Grainey find breadfruit like dis.”

“No good?” I looked from her to the breadfruit I held.

“You feel dem, sir. Dem breadfruit not real or something. A breadfruit heavier den dem you hold. Take dem. Dey good for nothing, not even for porridge.” She shook her head.

I thanked her and, with the breadfruits in my hands, went back to my jeep. I sat in the jeep in the dark in front of Mrs. Langford’s house for several minutes. I could call Superintendent McWilliams with what I knew… or suspected. He would ask why I didn’t tell him earlier. I wouldn’t have an answer, but it would be better than getting in any deeper. He could handle it from here on in. I knew that was what I should do. But I wasn’t going to do that. I had been on St. Pierre for almost five years without incident. I loved my new home and wanted to remain on the island. I knew what I was planning might jeopardize my citizenship, but I didn’t care. I felt a certain obligation to take care of this myself. And on some primal level I very much looked forward to it.

I drove back to the Sporting Place. Tubby was behind the bar, talking to Garnett Evans, who was on a stool nursing a beer. They both looked at me when I walked in.

“I hear Mr. Grainey someone beat he bad,” Tubby said. “Is that where you go? You knew?” He stared at me suspiciously.

“I didn’t know,” I said, being as truthful as I could be. I didn’t want anyone else to have any idea what I was thinking. I didn’t want to bring anyone else into this. This was for me to handle alone.

“Where you go?” Tubby inquired, his eyes still on me.

“I needed to check on my house,” I lied. “I forgot to leave food and water for the dogs.”

Tubby hissed through his teeth and shook his head. He was putting clean glasses into the cabinet below the bar. He knew me well enough to know I was bullshitting him, and it wasn’t making him happy. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t bringing him in on this.

“Ferguson come in here while you gone and tell us they find the body of Ricky Sagee in the lagoon,” Garnett said.

“Sagee?” Ricky Sagee was a local small-time hustler who worked the beaches and cruise port, selling ganja, hallucinogenic herbs, Viagra, sex, and anything else perceived as exotic to tourists.

“Gunshot,” Garnett added, pointing his finger to his forehead and pulling the trigger. “Executed what Ferguson say.”

And McWilliams said nothing about that to me, I thought to myself. So we were keeping information from each other.

I quickly thought of the dark figure running down the hill earlier in the day. The one who put the breadfruits on my bar counter. Was it Sagee? I had no evidence. I didn’t know for sure. I was what they called surmising.

“What that man say to you earlier? The skinny man with the hair,” Tubby asked, looking me in the eye. “He tell you something about all this? About Grainey or Sagee?” He was demanding answers. I wasn’t giving any.

“No, he didn’t tell me anything about any of that,” I responded truthfully, looking back into his eyes.

But Tubby didn’t believe me, as I knew he wouldn’t. He stormed out of the bar, grumbling loudly about “a crock of shit.”

I could have told him that the man just talked to me about breadfruit, Captain Bligh, and the mutiny on the Bounty, but Tubby would have read that as an insult to his intelligence; that I was busting his balls while withholding information. So though I wanted to tell him all, to confess what I knew, I said nothing. It was better he knew nothing, even if it potentially destroyed our relationship.

One of the four televisions was on, this one to ESPN Caribbean. There was a rugby match from the U.K. playing. I turned it off and began shutting everything down.

“Garnett, I’m closing up,” I told Johns. “You should go home now.”

He slowly got off the stool, took one last drink from his beer, and put the empty bottle on the bar. “Okay, but why you make Tubby so angry?” he asked. He waited a moment for an answer but, knowing he wasn’t going to get one, made his way to the door without looking back.

I was probably closer to Tubby Levett than anyone else on St. Pierre. I met him within a month of my arrival on the island. The first time was when he drove me up to look at the house I would eventually buy on the east coast, overlooking the Atlantic and the island’s rocky bluffs. He was filling in for a friend who owned the minibus he was driving, which was also used as a taxi. The next time I saw him, a few days later, he was working behind the bar of the Garrison Yacht Club, where I was to meet a real estate man about the property I was interested in purchasing where I would eventually build my sports bar. He remembered me immediately. “Mr. Len,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Call me Len,” I tried to correct him, but he wasn’t listening.

“You bought that little house on East Road,” he said.

“How did you know that?” I asked. He just shrugged. The longer I stayed on St. Pierre, the more I realized that everyone pretty much knew everything about everybody on the small island.

“What are you drinking, Mr. Len?” he asked, his smile wide and generous. “You know I make the best rum punch on de island.”

“Oh yeah? Well, let me be the judge of that,” I said. After a month on the island I was becoming an expert in rum punches. They say the recipe is “one part sour, two parts sweet, three parts strong, four parts weak.” Tubby made it differently. I took one sip and immediately was overpowered by the rum.

“Damn, Tubby! You got the strong and the weak mixed up. Not that I’m complaining.” I laughed.

He laughed with me when he saw my reaction. “I don’t believe dat old recipe. A true rum punch should be ‘one parts sour, two parts sweet, three parts weak, and four parts strong, and if you finish it, you’ll know that you belong.’” He grinned. “At least that’s what we say here in St. Pierre.”

I did finish it, but even after drinking many more of Tubby’s special rum punches over the years, I still wasn’t sure if I belonged.

A few days after meeting him in the Yacht Club, I ran into Tubby again. I had decided to go for a dive on St. Pierre’s acclaimed Purple Reef, a protected underwater site where the coral gave off a purplish glow and the variety of tropical fish supposedly was unsurpassed at any other dive sites around the island. To my surprise, it was Tubby who would accompany me on the dive.

“You drive a taxi, make a mean rum punch, and now you’re gonna go on a dive with me?” I asked him as we sat in the boat in our wetsuits. I was bewildered by his work ethic. “What don’t you do?”

He just laughed softly at my question. “Well, Mr. Len, I don’t play the piano. But I really wish I could.”

After purchasing the land where I planned to build the Sporting Place and hiring a local construction crew, I was having trouble communicating exactly what I wanted done. It wasn’t that the crew chief and I didn’t literally understand each other; there were subtle things I couldn’t convey. I needed someone local as a go-between—a liaison between myself and the crew. I thought of Tubby immediately.

I tracked him down at a high school where he was refereeing a cricket match. I sat in the grandstand in the hot sun for almost three hours while the crowd clapped and cheered at action on the field I couldn’t follow. A batsman swatted the ball with the flat end of the bat and then ran to a post and back. Sometimes another runner would run while a different batsman hit. Fielders would try to stop a ball from getting through to what looked like an outfield, and the pitchers, or what I learned were the “bowlers,” threw with as much velocity as some hard-throwing baseball major leaguers. Sitting there, I had no idea who was winning and how the game was scored, but when the small crowd began to get up and leave, I guessed the match was finally over.

I met him on the field and offered to buy him a beer. We got together at a picnic table near the field out of the sun and I laid out my proposal. I wanted him to work for me. To help me get the Sporting Place off the ground. I told him he could work part-time and continue his other gigs, or I could use him full-time with the promise of continuing once the bar was done as its manager and main bartender. He didn’t hesitate. He told me he would take the job even before I told him how much I would pay him for his services. “You pay me fair, Mr. Len, I’m sure of that,” he said while looking me in the eye. “I don’t want to have to fill in driving Murvin’s minibus or working at the Yacht Club only when they call. It’s time I do one thing good, not many.”

Tubby became more than just an employee. He was really a partner. And he was a friend. The best friend I had on St. Pierre. The Sporting Place was as much his as mine. Despite how close we had become, how much I trusted him, I wasn’t going to bring him in on what was potentially a very dangerous affair. After I hired him he got married, and now, with three young girls and his wife pregnant with a fourth child, there was no chance I would risk getting him involved.

I put the two breadfruits on top of the bar exactly where I found them earlier in the day. I reached under the bar and pulled out the cutlass I kept there for whenever Tubby or I needed to crack open a coconut. I slowly sliced through the top of one of the breadfruits. It came apart easily—its center had been hollowed of flesh and seeds. As it split in half, the tinted brown plastic packets filled with white powder spilled out onto my mahogany bar. I stared at them for a moment. I did the same to the other breadfruit. More brown packets fell out.

All of the Caribbean islands were ripe for smuggling, but St. Pierre had a reputation as being mostly immune to hard drugs and drug smuggling. The island did have its share of ganja, and occasionally there would be a big bust in the waters around the island or at customs at the port or airstrip, but for whatever reason, the hard stuff and what followed was kept out.

I continued to stare at the plastic packets of powder. I knew where I could reach Superintendent Keith McWilliams. He was who I should have called. But I remembered what I felt when I saw the flashing lights of the ambulance in front of Adolphus Grainey’s house. What the man took from them to protect his neighbor—from something I gave to him. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and took out the card I was given earlier by Mr. Arjoon. I turned on my cell phone and punched in the numbers that were on the card.

“Mr. Buonfiglio,” he answered. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “How did I know I would get your call?”

The sound of his voice made me cringe. “I don’t know. I guess you have skills others don’t.”

He laughed. “I think not, just business instincts. That’s all. And you are calling to tell me you have what I need to conduct my business?”

“Yeah, I’ve got them at my place. I can meet you there in an hour.”

There was a pause on the line. “I hope you use good sense, Mr. Buonfiglio. It would be bad for all if there were a lapse in your judgment. I know a bit about you. As I said, I think it’s good business to understand what motivates potential partners.”

“You don’t know a thing about me,” I grumbled. “I’ll see you in an hour.” I cut off the line and sat for a moment. What I did in New York was public record. Why I did it I knew, wasn’t.

I quickly turned off all the lights in the bar and headed out to my jeep. I was moving on pure instinct now. There were no deep thoughts and introspection about what I really should do. I was just letting my mind follow my body, rather than the opposite. The same feeling I had on that morning in June. I know now I should have handled things differently then. Doing what I did on that day changed my life. On that day for those people, they had no choice; their lives, their futures were not in their hands. But mine was. And my family’s. I had a choice then, and I had a choice now. Or did I really?

An hour later I was sitting alone in the semidarkness of the Sporting Place. The only lights on were the lighting under the bar and behind the bottle display; they gave off a dim greenish glow. You couldn’t see much in the bar overall, but when Arjoon arrived, the two breadfruits on the bar would be easily visible.

I was sitting at one of the tables. I had thought about keeping the cutlass close by, but then decided against it. The cutlass was what I had always known as a machete, a tool for cutting away brush. But since moving to St. Pierre, I had adapted the Caribbean term for the tool. It was a household staple on the island. You could see them dangling from the hands and even belts of men walking to work in the mornings. There was almost no gun violence on St. Pierre. Gun laws were strict, and firearms were illegal without a series of hard-to-obtain permits and expensive tariffs. Attempts at gun smuggling, and there had been a few since I had lived on the island, were dealt with harshly. As an alternative, the cutlass was often a cause of violence and crime. And when it occurred, it wasn’t pretty. Thankfully those instances were also rare. But whoever put a bullet in Ricky Sagee’s head had a gun. It very likely could have been Arjoon. The cutlass, even if I were skilled in using it, would do me no good if Arjoon had a gun. What would? I really had no idea.

I had left the door to the bar open, and as I peered from my seat at one of the tables, I could see the approaching headlights of the black Lexus make their way toward the Sporting Place. The headlights shone into the doorway as the car turned into the three-car parking lot in front of the bar.

I heard two car doors open and then close and then Arjoon was at the doorway, followed by a very large light-brown-skinned man with a curly Mohawk and a thick black beard. Arjoon grinned as he looked at me, revealing those crooked teeth.

“Mr… . Buon… fig… lio,” he said, drawing out my name with intended drama. “Very good of you to invite us here at this late hour. It has been a long day and I’m tired. I expected to be asleep by now in one of LuJean’s comfortable beds and dreaming about her famous breakfast.”

I kept my eye on the big man as Arjoon walked past me to the bar.

He glanced at the bar, staring at the breadfruits there. “I came to St. Pierre bearing breadfruit, a carton of twelve. I have accounted for ten—two went missing. Are those my missing breadfruits?”

I didn’t answer. “You didn’t have to do what you did to Mr. Grainey,” I said instead. Arjoon turned back to face me. I looked back at him.

“Oh, but we did. He had something that belonged to me and would not tell me where it was. We… well, not we, really, but my associate Parker here did his best to get him to tell us where we could find my property, but the old man just wasn’t much of a talker.” Arjoon was studying me—trying to read my expression. “I know you gave him what was mine. The poor man suffered because of what you did. But how would you know? You shouldn’t really blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault at all.”

His smile returned, and I felt my mouth go dry. I sensed the big man behind me. I wanted to get up from my chair. It took all I had to stay put.

“I’m hoping our business can conclude without more violence,” he said, again turning to the breadfruits on the bar. “I would very much like that. I would very much like to collect what is mine and leave this island. It was a mistake to come here, and I take full responsibility for that.”

He leaned against the bar and picked up one of the breadfruits, weighing it in his hand. He looked back at me. His smile was gone. He pulled out a knife from his pocket and opened it, the blade glinting from the lighting behind the bar. He slit the breadfruit open with the knife. Pulp and seeds spilled onto the bar. He quickly cut open the other—again just pulp and seeds. He shook his head as he looked at me and then glanced at the big man behind me.

Before I knew it I was lifted up off my chair and thrown hard against the side of the bar. I felt the air whoosh out of me. I tried to get onto my feet, but the big man, Parker, had me again; this time his fist was driving hard into my chest, knocking me back again.

I slowly tried to stand. Parker was moving toward me again. I needed to get to my feet. I had to get up. Arjoon moved in front of me and held out his palm, keeping Parker away from me. “This is no game, Mr. Buonfiglio,” he said, bending over me so close I could see the blackheads on his pockmarked face and smell the curry he ate for dinner on his breath. “Where is my property?”

I stood straight up now. My chest felt as if it had been hit by a sledgehammer. I kept my eyes on Arjoon. “You shouldn’t have hurt that man,” I whispered to him.

Arjoon just shook his head and pulled his hand back. Parker moved to me again. This time I set myself so I had one leg in front of the other, leaning back a bit on my rear, right leg. It had been a long time since I had done this. I hadn’t trained at all since I left New York. I never had the desire. That was part of my past; St. Pierre was my future, whatever was left of it. I didn’t think there would be a need for anything like this, but now there was. I flexed the ball of my left leg and, opening up my back right leg, swung up my left leg, whipping it around as fast and straight as I could, my shin driving hard into Parker’s neck, the roundhouse kick sending him backward and down onto one of the bar’s few tables, shattering it.

The kick stunned me as well; my leg was throbbing and the many nerves in my back buzzing like high-voltage jolts of electrical shocks. Parker was down, but the kick was not forceful enough to put him out. He got up surprisingly quickly and grabbed hold of me. He pinned my left arm against my chest tightly as he delivered jabs to my neck and jaw, but there wasn’t enough behind them to take me out. Still, each blow was like a shovel to my head. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. He was much younger. He was much bigger. And my window was closing fast. He had his left arm tight around my own left arm and chest, holding me firm as he delivered his blows, but he had left my hips and legs free. Again, trying to draw on my training from years ago, I quickly swiveled, and almost leaving my feet, I drew the fist and elbow of my right arm up in a rapid motion, spinning it around at full force and driving it through Parker’s temple, just above his eye. The diagonal elbow strike stunned Parker, and his arms went lifeless now as they fell from my body. He went down again. I turned, poised now in a fighting position. But this time he didn’t get up.

The pain from the blow to Parker’s head shot through my elbow down my arm and back up to my neck. It was a numbing tingle that made my legs sway. I was about to turn to Arjoon when I felt the cold gun muzzle against the back of my head. “Put your head on the bar,” he commanded. I did as he said. “Very impressive, Mr. Buonfiglio. But now it’s over. I have no more time for any of this. I will kill you. And though I liked meeting and chatting with you earlier, now I don’t like you at all and will take enormous pleasure in seeing your brains splattered on your shiny bar. So one last time before I take my leave from this backwater island: where is my property?”

With my head pressed to the bar, I heard his words, but I wasn’t thinking about them. They were just fading background noise. Instead I thought about how heavy the smoke was and how it singed my throat as I made my way up those stairs on that June morning. I was as close to death then as I was now. But I kept moving. I survived and helped others survive. I didn’t do it to be a hero. I had my own selfish—dishonorable—reasons. But they said I was a hero. And that was my curse. I survived that day and many times wished I hadn’t. Did I want to survive this one? I wasn’t sure.

“Okay now.” I heard him grunt and then I heard what sounded like a shot. I expected pain. But all I felt was the force of his body on top of mine.

I pulled myself out from under him. The back of his head was caved in; even that unsightly male hair bun was matted with blood and indented into his skull.

I slowly turned around. Tubby was there. In his hand was a cricket bat, the blood from Arjoon’s skull discoloring its wooden finish. I fell back onto one of the barstools. My body was a painful throb that wouldn’t stop.

“I see a move like that on TV once,” he said. “Muay Thai?” His eyes were on me in a combination of awe and pity.

I looked at him but didn’t answer. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest. I was too tired to talk.

“You go to my ma’s house and take her breadfruit,” Tubby said to me, his eyes on the beat-up mess in front of him. “Next time ask me and I bring the breadfruit to you. Next time you’ll know better than to hide de stuff from your partner.”

Next time? There better not be a next time, I thought to myself. I gave him a weary nod. “Yeah, Tubby, I will,” I mumbled while I continued to try to suck air back into my lungs.

When my heart slowed enough for me to speak more clearly, I pointed to the door to the back. “Tubby, go out to the smoker,” I said. “There’s a big jar in it. Bring it here.”

He put down the bloody cricket bat. I stared at it while I waited. A few moments later he returned, holding a half-gallon jar filled with the brown packets of powder. “Dis what dat man come for? He bring it in the breadfruit?” He laughed to himself and shook his head. “Dem think of everything.”

The sound of McWilliams’s police car siren was slowly getting louder as it made its way up the hill.

“One more favor, Tubby,” I asked, looking up at him. I still couldn’t move from where I was.

He put the jar on the bar next to the split breadfruits and looked at me, waiting to see what it was I wanted.

“Make me one of those rum punches of yours.”

A small smile began to form on his face. “‘One parts sour, two parts sweet,” he rhymed. “Three parts weak… and four parts… strong.”

I was able to finally smile.

He kept his eyes on me and continued the rhyme as he went behind the bar and ducked under to grab a bottle of rum. “Drink it all…” He stood back up and pulled a glass from the drainer. “…and you’ll know that you belong.”

I drank it all.