The Lucifer Gospel

29

Tucker Noe lived on the south coast of New Providence-the hurricane side, where the winds blew up the channel from the south, or curled in from the open sea to the east. Coral Cay Point stuck out like a bony finger into the pale green sea with mangrove on one side and coral bonefish shallows on the other. The point itself was a neat collection of narrow old docks and walkways that were home to three dozen small fishing boats, a sportfisher or two, and Spindrift, once a World War Two minesweeper, then converted into an oceanographic research ship for the University of Florida, and finally turned into a live-aboard salvage and sometime dive boat run by a crew of aging ex-hippies and scuba junkies. Tucker Noe lived in a small shack perched on the end of the Spindrift dock beside a pair of old Texaco pumps and directly in front of his own bonefish boat, an unnamed thirty-two-foot cabin flatboat with a roughly made plank cabin sitting on top of the open deck. A worn canvas awning stretched from the cabin to the transom. The transom itself was fitted with two old-fashioned Evinrude outboards, both with their covers off and the guts of the engines exposed. A very old man was sitting on a plastic-webbed lawn chair under the awning with a homemade plywood table in front of him. The table was painted with checkerboard squares of red and black. A set of homemade chess pieces roughly carved from dark and pale coral were set out on the board. There were only a few pieces in each color left in play. A letter on blue airmail paper lay to one side.

“Idiot,” muttered the old man, a gnarled finger pushing his king forward. “He takes me for a fool?” He glanced at the letter and shook his head in disgust.

“I’ll be damned,” whispered Hilts, staring down at the board as they stepped aboard the old boat. “That’s the Opera House Massacre, or close to it.”

Sidney Poitier made the introductions, then eased his backside down on the boat’s wide gunwale with a sigh.

“You know something about chess, sir?” asked Tucker Noe.

“Some,” Hilts said.

“What’s the Opera House Massacre?” Finn asked.

“A famous game in Paris, at the Opera House there,” explained the photographer. “An American chess player named Paul Morphy was challenged to a game by the Duke of Brunswick and a count something or other.”

“Isouard was his name,” the old man supplied. His voice carried an educated English accent touched by the faint lilt of the islands. His skin was black and very wrinkled, even the smooth skin of his palms set out with a web of tiny creases. He looked as though he’d been out in the sun for a century, which was probably fairly close to being accurate.

“That’s right. Anyway it was 1858. They were watching the Barber of Seville. Morphy was in a hurry to see the rest of the opera so he beat the two men playing against him together during the intermission. Morphy was the first international grandmaster from America. They didn’t have a chance.” Hilts pointed to the roughly made chessboard. “That’s how the game turned out.”

“You have an excellent eye,” said the old man.

“It’s a famous game.”

“If you know about famous chess games. It’s not like playing Grand Theft Auto Four on a PlayStation,” said Tucker Noe.

“I gave up after version number two,” Hilts said with a smile.

“I have many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Even a few great-great-grandchildren.” The old man laughed. “I’m an expert at stealing cars and assassinating prostitutes on the streets of Liberty City, or wherever it is on the latest version. It seems to be a necessary talent these days, even here in our island paradise.”

“They’re lookin’ for the Acosta Star,” said Sidney Poitier. There was a long silence.

“You’re divers,” Tucker Noe said with a sigh.

“Not really,” said Finn. “We’re interested in a passenger who might have been aboard on her last voyage.”

“Family?”

“No.”

“The Acosta Star was no treasure galleon,” Tucker Noe cautioned. “She was an early cruise ship.”

“We’re aware of that,” answered Hilts. “The ship is part of a puzzle we’re trying to figure out. It’s a bit of a life-and-death thing,” he added, frowning.

“I’m becoming curious.” The old man smiled. “Not something that happens often to men of advanced years like me or Mr. Poitier here.”

“Speak for yourself, old man,” the taxi driver snorted.

“I generally do,” answered Tucker Noe. “When I’m forced to by the stupidity of others.” He arched an eyebrow at his friend, who arched an eyebrow back. Finn was beginning to wonder if there was anyone under eighty living on the whole island. She glanced toward the other side of the dock and saw a muscular, blond-haired man in a T-shirt clambering up the gangway on the side of the Spindrift, Tucker Noe’s neighbor. Definitely in the under-thirty class. She smiled at her little private thought.

“His name is probably Tab,” said Hilts, who’d spotted the man as well. Not such a private thought after all.

“Actually his name is Dolf van Delden. His late father was the Spindrift’s owner,” said Tucker Noe. “Dutch, from Amsterdam. I don’t ask beyond that.”

“Interesting people you have here.”

“Places like New Providence have always attracted interesting people. How many countries have a motto like ‘Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored’?”

“You make it sound like there’s some question of that.”

“Jury’s still out on the pirate issue. Time was they had names like Morgan and Teach. Now it’s Escobar and Rodriguez.”

“We were talking about the Acosta Star,” interrupted Finn.

“That’s so.” The old man nodded.

“Sidney here said you saw her go down,” said Finn. “In a hurricane.”

“Donna,” Tucker Noe said, nodding. “She was in the eye, burning like a candle. I was making for Guinchos Cay or Cay Lobos before I sank myself.”

“You were out in a hurricane in this?” said Hilts.

“She was the Malahat. Old Chris-Craft fish boat I used to take charters out on.”

“A fishing charter in a hurricane?”

“Other business. And you’ve clearly never been in a hurricane. They have a tendency to come out of nowhere, just like Donna.”

“What other business?” Finn asked.

“None of yours,” answered Tucker Noe with a crisp edge to his voice.

“Oh,” said Finn, suddenly understanding what the other business was.

“You just leave it at that.” He glanced at Poitier. “I have changed my ways since then,” he added stiffly.

“Bull crap.” The taxi driver laughed. “You just changed your methods, old man.”

“Nevertheless,” said Tucker Noe, turning back to Hilts.

The photographer waved dismissively. “No problem. This was at night?”

“That’s right.”

Simpson had said eleven at night, Finn remembered. It seemed as though his information was on the mark.

“How did you know it was the Acosta Star?” asked Finn.

“I didn’t, not right then,” answered Tucker Noe. “Though I had my suspicions.”

“No radio?” asked Hilts.

“I had one, but no one was calling on it,” said the old man.

“And presumably you were ducking under the radar,” said Hilts.

“This was 1960, young man. There wasn’t much in the way of radar at all back then. The Bay of Pigs was still almost a year away. I doubt if Seсor Castro had a gallon of gasoline to spare for patrol boats. The Acosta Star was a torch, not a spy ship or any kind of threat.”

“Did you try to help?”

“No, I stayed clear. There was no sign of life, you could see that the davits were all swung out, lines in the water, lifeboats gone. A ghost ship.”

“Was she under power?” Hilts asked.

“Hard to say. Maybe. The swells were very bad. She might have stayed afloat for a long time if it hadn’t been for the hurricane. I reached Cay Lobos just before midnight. There’s an old lighthouse there. I beached Malahat on the lee shore and went up the tower just before the weather broke again.”

“What happened?”

“The hull had obviously been weakened. She broached and broke in half toward the stern. She was gone in less than a minute.”

“No survivors?”

“As I said, she was a hulk. Everyone capable of getting off was obviously gone. There was no one left on board to survive.”

“Acosta Star was a big ship. How come no one ever found her?”

“She was a big ship but it’s a bigger ocean. I was the only one to see her go. Most wouldn’t have put her that far south or west. By rights she should have gone down in the Tongue, which is where most people think she is. Down in the deep.” He paused. “But she’s not.” The old man plucked the dark, carved coral king off the chessboard and twirled it between a gnarled old thumb and forefinger. “She’s in a little more than fifteen fathoms-her keel at a hundred feet maybe-lying on a sandy bottom in the shadow of a place called No-Name Reef. You could fly over her at wave height and never see her unless it was just the right time of day. Not that it matters any now.”

“Why’s that?” Hilts asked.

“ ‘Cause no one ever goes to No-Name Reef no more,” Poitier answered.

“Why’s that?” said Finn.

“Because No-Name Reef is in disputed Cuban territorial waters,” responded Tucker Noe. “It’s not 1960 any longer. There’s lots of patrol boats and lots of radar these days. The only other people traveling in those waters are coke runners in ‘go-fast’ boats outward bound from Barranquilla or Santa Marta on the Colombian coast, and they’re usually better armed than the Cubans or the DEA. The Acosta Star is in a war zone.”

“Maybe your friend could help,” suggested Poitier. “The writer fellow. As I understand, he knows that old ship inside and out.”

Tucker Noe threw his friend a warning glance but the taxi driver ignored him. “Lives out there all alone on Hollaback Cay, must be bored out of his skull. You and that Mills character went out to the wreck a few times, didn’t you, old man?”

“Lyman Mills? That writer?” asked Finn. “The one they used to call the poor man’s James Michener?” Lyman Aloysius Mills had virtually invented the idea of the beach bestseller. As a teenager Finn had read her mother’s creased and spine-cracked hand-me-down copies, inhaling them like hot buttered popcorn.

“Man owns a private island in the Bahamas don’t qualify as a poor man’s anything in my book,” said Sidney Poitier with a laugh.

“That Mills?” Hilts repeated.

“That’s the one,” said Tucker Noe with a nod.