Twenty blue devils

Chapter 24

The offices of the Paradise Coffee Company were in a large Quonset but of indeterminate age and origin that had been set up near the drying shed. This musty fossil had originally been found abandoned in a jungly section of the land that Dean Parks had purchased to build the Shangri-La. Nick had bought it from him forty-five years earlier for $100, moved it to his plantation, and set it up as headquarters for his short-lived copra empire. When that had fizzled and he'd switched to coffee he had seen no reason for new office space. Nelson's never-ending arguments that a more civilized habitat was good business practice had finally convinced him to lease a handsome suite of offices overlooking the loading docks in downtown Papeete, but Nelson himself was the only one who used it regularly, along with his staff of four. The Hut, as everyone referred to it, remained the locus of most of the hurly-burly of Paradise Coffee's day-to-day management.

But when John and Gideon arrived the next morning at a quarter to eleven, there was no hurly-burly in evidence. The clerk who generally sat in the anteroom was out sick, Nelson was at the Papeete office, Maggie was conducting a training session, and Rudy was off somewhere. As a result, they found themselves looking through a string of empty cubicles at Nick Druett, sitting alone in his Spartan office at the far end. Even through four partitions of cheap glass, they could see the scowl on his face.

"Nelson was right, how does that grab you?” was his muttered greeting when they rapped on the glass wall of his cubicle.

"About what?” John asked.

"About Tari.” He slammed shut the account book he'd had opened on his desk. “The guy has screwed up everything he's gotten his paws on.” He banged the book with the flat of his hand. “The only difference I have with Nelson is that I don't believe it's a bunch of innocent mistakes; I think the big bastard's been ripping us off from here to Patagonia.” He puffed his cheeks and let out a long, exasperated breath through his mouth. “Or who knows, maybe I'm wrong, maybe the guy's just dumb. Rudy's in there with him right now, trying to get it all sorted out. Hey, sit down, sit down."

Without asking he poured them coffee from a jug on a side table. Blue Devil, Gideon thought appreciatively at his first sip.

"Listen, Gideon, I've already said this to John, but I want to apologize to you too.” He was wearing an honest-to-God shirt, with buttons and sleeves (short) and a collar, apparently in honor of Bertaud's impending visit. “For the runaround."

"That's not necessary, Nick."

"Yeah, it is. I'm sorry I gave you such a hard time. You were right-you were both right-and I was wrong. If you hadn't stuck to your guns we still wouldn't know what really happened to Brian. So thanks for…well, thanks."

"I'm sorry it's been so tough on your daughter,” Gideon said awkwardly.

Nick smiled vaguely, joylessly. “Yeah, me too. But believe me, she's happier going through this than if she knew she was letting somebody get away with Brian's murder,” He sipped mechanically from his mug. “John, who killed him?” he asked softly.

"Who knew where he was camping?” John replied.

"Are you kidding? Everybody knew. He used the same spot year in, year out. I've got thirty acres on Raiatea. That's where he set up camp-on the plateau.” He shook his big head slowly back and forth. “I'll never build them now, that's for sure."

Gideon's mind had been running along a side track of its own. “Nick, just how was Tari ripping you off?"

"Well, he was-” Nick looked at him sharply. “You think there's a connection? To Brian?"

Gideon shrugged. “Could be.” When a lot of funny things are going on together, Abe Goldstein had pointed out more than once, they got a funny way of turning out to be related. The Law of Interconnected Monkey Business, his old professor had called it.

"Well, he was skimming,” Nick said. “Not hard to do in a business like this, where there are a million different prices and they change every day. Say we're buying five thousand pounds of green beans from a farm in Java to go into the Weekend Blend or one of the other low-end products-” Gideon winced. “-and they're charging us a buck-eighty a pound. Well, Tari just adds a little zero, records the price as ten-eighty a pound instead of one-eighty, and keeps the difference. The people in Java get their money so they don't complain, and the books balance, and we don't know any better. So Tari just walks away with nine times five thousand."

"Fifty thousand bucks,” John said.

"Forty-five thousand,” said Nick bitterly. “Let's be fair to the guy. And that's only one example. I can give you at least two more and I guarantee there'll be more to come when we really dig into things."

"But how could he get away with it?” asked Gideon. “That's a big difference, one-eighty to ten-eighty. Surely you, or Rudy, or Nelson, or somebody would know what's what, would know what the price was supposed to be."

Nick shook his head. “It's not the way we do business. At Paradise when we give somebody responsibility we trust him,” he said righteously, then laughed at himself. “Or did until now. Look. For the past two weeks Tari has been spending half his time at the Papeete office, half here. He's had complete access to everything-the books, the accounts-and complete authority to do anything Brian could do. If he needed help, he asked for it, that's all. We trusted him. Thanks to Maggie,” he couldn't resist adding in a grumpy aside.

"So how did you find out?” Gideon asked.

"We found out because Nelson never trusted the big, ugly bugger and he was keeping an eye on him, and when he finally got together with Rudy and compared the figures they didn't match."

John suddenly held up his hand. “That was a shot.” He had his head tilted to one side, listening. Gideon hadn't heard anything.

"Nah,” Nick said, “it's just one of the vans; got a problem with backfiring."

John listened a moment longer, then settled down again. “Probably so."

"Nick,” Gideon said, “how do you know it's Tari who's doing it and not somebody else?"

"I know because it never happened before Tari got a chance to get his fat fingers in the pie, that's how I know. The skimming started when he started, not a day before. It's real obvious, Gideon, there can't be any doubt about it.” He glanced up over their shoulders. “We're back here, Leopold!"

Colonel Bertaud had arrived promptly on the stroke of eleven, and with him was the large, bearded gendarme who had surprised them at the graveyard. The two men came down the linoleum-floored hallway, Bertaud's small feet pattering twice for every gallumphing step of his giant assistant's. The colonel was in his dapper uniform, the gendarme in his blue shirt and shorts.

"Good morning, Nick,” Bertaud said, in the doorway of the cubicle. He nodded civilly to John and Gideon. “Good day, gentlemen. Thank you for-"

At that moment the rear door of the hut, only a few feet away, burst open and banged against the wall. In the doorway stood Rudy Druett, as pale as death, swaying back and forth, his thin hair disheveled and straggling.

"I, er, don't feel very well,” he said vaguely.

Several pairs of well-meaning hands were thrust out toward him, but Rudy, snapping out of his semitrance, was suddenly wild. “I'm all right, I'm all right!” he shouted, pushing them away. “Don't touch me. I don't need any help, I'm fine, I'm fine. He's dead, I killed him. I can't believe it, Nick, I can't make myself-"

"Rudy,” Nick said forcefully. “Stop raving. Sit down.” He slid a wooden chair to him. Shakily, Rudy sat. The hysteria subsided, leaving him limp. His face was a sickly, glistening gray. Only the blue-black bags under his eyes had any color. Even his eyes were gray, almost colorless, something John had never noticed before.

"Now collect your thoughts,” Nick told him. “Tell us what happened. Slowly. Who's dead?"

"Dead?” Rudy said after a second. He was staring straight ahead, as if watching something the others couldn't see.

"Come on, pull yourself together,” Nick said harshly. “Look at me."

Rudy raised his eyes obediently. The feverish glare dimmed a little.

"That's better,” Nick said. “Now. Who's dead?"

"Tari."

"Tari!"

Nick's inadvertent shout made Rudy flinch as if he'd been struck. His hand went to his mouth. “Oh, my God,” he said, “my God…"

"May I?” Bertaud interceded smoothly, edging an unresisting Nick out of the way. He pulled up another chair and set it across from Rudy's. “My name is Colonel Bertaud. And you are…?"

The tranquil, beautifully modulated voice had its effect. “Rudy Druett. I-"

"Very good, Mr. Druett. A glass of water? No? All right, then. Someone is dead, yes?"

Rudy nodded. “Tari, one of the, the workers. I-I shot him. I had to, you see…"

"And where did this happen?"

"In the cabin."

"In the cabin. And where is the cabin?"

Nick cut in impatiently. “Right there.” He pointed through the glass panel of the door at a small stone shack about a hundred yards up a path that led up the hill. ‘"Tari's been using it for an office."

"I killed him,” Rudy said. “I shot him, in the…in the…” He had calmed down under the influence of Bertaud's simple, methodical questioning, but his face was still the color of dust. “Here,” he said at last, touching the side of his head.

Bertaud glanced at the gendarme and motioned with his chin toward the cabin. “Dumont,” he said.

Dumont left, his big, bare thighs bunching as he took the path at a heavy trot.

"Now then,” Bertaud said. “Please explain."

Rudy ran a hand through his scant, rumpled hair. “I wish everybody would sit down,” he said, abruptly peevish. “You're all looming over me."

Bertaud waved a hand at the others. Nick and Gideon took chairs off to the sides. John sat on a nearby desk.

"Explain,” said Bertaud again, with a little more flint in his voice, “Why did you go to the cabin?"

"I asked him to,” said Nick.

"Nick, be quiet,” Bertaud said without taking his eyes from Rudy. “Go ahead."

After a couple of false starts Rudy began to talk, disjointedly at first but then more steadily. The dead, fiat pallor gave way to bright pink patches in his cheeks and at the sides of his throat. He had gone to the cabin, he explained, to have it out with Tari over the discrepancies in the records and to see if, against all odds, Tari could satisfactorily explain them. Tari had been nervous from the moment Rudy had walked in, as if he had sensed that something was up, and his very nervousness, even before they'd begun to talk, had convinced Rudy that there wasn't going to be any satisfactory explanation.

There wasn't. For the first few minutes Tari had fumblingly tried to talk his way out of trouble, but the discrepancies had been there for them both to see. Tari's manner had grown more desperate by the second, and he had finally reared up in his chair, seized Rudy by the front of his shirt, and begun to slam him against the stone wall in the cabin, shouting “You ain't going to tell nobody!” again and again.

"And you did what?” Bertaud asked when Rudy seemed to run down.

"What any sensible person would have done, of course,” Rudy said in a brief stab at sounding more like his old self. “I sacrificed honor to prudence and swore to high heaven that I wouldn't tell a soul.” But he couldn't keep it up. His eyes closed, he slumped in the chair.

"He looked frightened, not angry, to tell you the truth,” he said, “but he was so excited, so huge, and he was hurting me…my feet were actually off the floor…you can't imagine…my head was banging…” His hand wandered absently to the back of his head and when he took it away there was a smear of drying blood on the palm. He stared at it, open-mouthed. Gideon thought he was going to faint.

Bertaud took the hand and pressed it down, out of sight. “Continue, please."

Tari had kept on thumping his head against the wall, Rudy told them, and at some point he must have blacked out because the next thing he knew he was lying crumpled against the base of the wall and Tari, in a frenzy, was rummaging in the top drawer of a cabinet near the door. As Rudy watched in horror, the Tahitian came up with what he was looking for, a long-barreled, old-fashioned revolver…

"That old Ruger Single-Six,” Nick murmured to himself. “Tari's had it forever."

"I knew he was going to kill me,” Rudy said with a burst of energy that sat him upright. He looked up fiercely, taking all of them in. “You have to believe that. If it had happened to you, you'd know too. Otherwise I'd never have had the nerve, not in a million years…"

He had jumped up and stumbled half-consciously across the room, he said, and grabbed frantically at the gun with both hands. The instant he touched it, it went off-

"Must have had the hammer cocked,” John said.

"Yes, the hammer, that's right!” Rudy exclaimed, as if this were some vital point. “It makes a little click-I heard it. I think that's what woke me up…"

"And the bullet struck him?” Bertaud asked.

"Yes…well, the funny thing is, I thought I was shot at first. It's amazing-I was sure I felt it hit me, I thought I was dying, and Tari was just standing there without moving…but in a second he just-he just fell over-backward, like a big tree falling…"

A shiver rolled visibly down his body. The energy went out of him once more. He closed his eyes again and didn't open them as he continued. “There's a fireplace with a raised hearth. He hit the back of his head on it. I…heard it crack. He didn't move. When I went to look at him I could see-"

Dumont came back, huffing from his run. “Dead as a herring,” he said to Bertaud in French. “Gunshot wound in the right temple, blood all over the place, what a mess. I called headquarters. LePeau and his people are on the way."

"Good. See if Dr. Viennot is available too. He'll want to have a look. Then get this one"- this one was Rudy-"off to the hospital to have his head looked after, and then have Brusseau take his statement."

"I don't need a hospital,” Rudy said in English. “I'm perfectly fine, all I need is a Band-Aid. I was just a little woozy there for a-"

The policeman ignored him. “Should I seal the cabin?” he asked Bertaud.

"No, I'll take care of it. I want to go and see for myself."

Dumont left, hauling a querulous, weakly protesting Rudy with him.

Bertaud opened the back door, then hesitated. “Mr. Lau, Dr. Oliver-if you would care to see the scene…?"

They both answered at once.

"Sure,” John said.

"Good God, no!” said Gideon.