Twenty-Seven Bones

6

As much of a horror as the weekend had been in other ways, financially it had been a blessing for Holly-two busy nights at Busy Hands, lots of extras and lots of tips. So when her first client Monday morning-the hemiplegic Helen Chapman, up on the ridge-laid an extra twenty on her, Holly decided to visit Vincent at the Sunset Bar and parlay the Jackson and a neck rub into an eighth of rain forest chronic.

Vincent was wearing his customary tight yellow tank top, which contrasted dramatically with his brown skin. He tossed Holly a bar towel to dry her rain-drenched hair. He had drawn the pull-down bamboo screens that surrounded the circular bar, leaving only a narrow opening for a doorway. It was cozy inside, if humid, and the rain on the round tin roof sounded so much like a steel drum band that she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear it break into “Yellow Bird” or “Jamaica Farewell.”

Holly came around the bar, worked on Vincent’s neck for a few minutes, then started working on his arms. The distal surface of Vincent’s right arm was striped horizontally with short, irregular raised scars from shoulder to wrist. Scar tissue was tricky-you wanted to loosen the adhesions, but gently, gently, without forcing anything. Holly traced her fingertips along the cicatrices. She felt she knew him well enough by now to ask how he’d come by them.

“Knife fightin’,” he replied. “Never could handle lefties.”

Holly worked for twenty minutes, then took a seat on a barstool while Vincent opened the safe under the bar and took out a weighed, bagged eighth of an ounce of chronic-actually 3.5 grams, an eighth of a dealer’s ounce-then froze with his hand still under the bar.

“Good afternoon, Vincent, Miss Gold,” boomed a mahogany-skinned fat man wearing a dripping raincoat, as he turned sideways to fit through the narrow opening in the bamboo shutters.

“Good afternoon, Detective Hamilton,” said Holly and Vincent in unison. It had taken Holly a few months to understand the importance the islanders placed on the formal greeting; there were shopkeepers who to this day still gave her the stank-eye because she had inadvertently offended them.

Vincent brought his hand up empty from under the bar. Hamilton was one of his best clients, but in his profession one could never be too discreet. “And what can I do for you on this sorry day?”

“Not a sorry day at all, mon,” said Hamilton, taking off his poncho and draping it over an empty barstool. “It’s a day of jubilation, or ain’ ya hear?”

“Hear what?”

“De Machete Mon, me son-he done chop off de las’ han’ he gahn ta chop on dis’ eart’.”

“You got him!” cried Holly.

“His las’ victim got ’im. Whore from Montserrat, name’ Angela. Shot he aftah he chop she han’. Gyirl foun’ dem in de lime grove, boat togeddah, boat dead.”

“Dis calls for a celebration-on de house.” Vincent reached for the bottle of St. Luke Reserve under the bar, set up three shot glasses, filled the first two, glanced questioningly at Holly. She shook her head. Hamilton winked a bloodshot eye at her and told her she was going to need that drink when she found out who the Machete Man was.

“Who?”

“Your neighbor-St. Vincent mon.”

“Ruford Shea?” Holly was rocked, all right, though not enough to blow ten years of sobriety (at least as far as alcohol was concerned). “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it.” Hamilton knocked back his drink.

“But Ruford wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Dot’s because flies ain’ got no han’ ta chop.” Hamilton chortled at his own joke, then turned one-drink serious. “Take it from de seniormos’ detective on St. Luke,” he told her. “De Machete Mon and Ruford Shea be one and de same, and dey boat be deadahs now.”