Caribbean Ice: With linked Table of Contents

By Wilson Roberts

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. 'Caribbean Ice,' set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the second novel in a trilogy featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. Until being indicted, Bailey Vandeventer ran the Back Bay Escort Service providing sexual services to a high end clientele that included leading politicians, business men and opinion makers. When the Boston Globe ran an article claiming that Bailey had notebooks detailing her clients' identities and sexual preferences she takes refuge on St. Ursula, staying with her college roommate, Vivian Parker, the wife of St. Ursula's Prime Minister, L. Arthur Parker. Parker tells Frank that if he wishes to remain on St. Ursula he will protect Bailey from the people who are seeking her notebooks and wish to silence her. When Bailey is kidnapped, Frank, Chance and their friend, Vinnie Ledford, a retired SEAL, set out to rescue her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781515402244

Book preview

Caribbean Ice

By Wilson Roberts

FOR DIANE ESSER

AND

PETER WHIMS

WTHOUT WHOM I WOULD NOT HAVE HAD A CHANCE

Cover Image © Wilson Roberts

Wilder Publications, Inc.

PO Box 632

Floyd, VA 24091

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or transmitted in any form or manner by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express, prior written permission of the author and/or publisher, except for brief quotations for review purposes only. Caribbean Ice is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5154-0224-4

FIRST EDITION

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

ONE

PERSONAL FORTUNES change quickly in the Caribbean. The day L. Arthur Parker, the Prime Minister of St. Ursula, forced me to take on the task of protecting Bailey Vandeventer, I had spent hours in my office at the Tabard Inn helping my friend Chance design a security system for his Choy Lee motor yacht, Maybelline II. We were nearly finished and looking forward to relaxing.

A year earlier Chance bailed out of a failing plumbing supply business and invested in St. Ursula’s new television station and cable system. The business had done well. A few months later his father died, leaving him several million dollars in liquid assets and an estate worth over fifty million. Now Chance was a wealthy yachtsman scrutinizing schematic diagrams of the boat, marking with red crosses the spots where he wanted security monitors located.

Put a couple of TV cameras in the engine room, he said, placing two more red marks on the schematic.

That’s twelve monitors so far. It was almost one-thirty and my stomach was growling for lunch. At the price of these things you’re going to have as much invested in security as you do in the boat.

The rich can’t afford to be careless. He picked up the schematic, looking for places he might have missed. My father would turn over in his grave if he knew I’d spent a penny of my inheritance on a boat. He always said human beings were meant to fly before they were intended to travel on the surface of the water. But he’d absolutely spin in his vacuum sealed platinum coffin if he thought the damn boat had an inadequate security system. He stood, moving his bulk over to the window behind my desk.

I followed. We looked down at Maybelline II looming like an immense planet among the sticks of sailboats in St. Ursula’s harbor. Next to it, a sad, abandoned floating shack, was Maybelline, the motorless hulk, which had been Chance’s home for the ten years we had known each other. Even from the window I could see the peeling paint, the thick crust of barnacles an the first Maybelline as it rocked on the waves.

Quite a change, I said.

He spread his arms wide, grinning at me. I love it. I love being able to buy anything I want, anytime I want it. I can go anywhere, do anything. I flat out love it.

Since long before I met him, the first night after I had moved to the British Caribbean island of St. Ursula, Chance had been in one business and then another. He would start something and once it got rolling he’d get bored, sell out and start something else. The television venture was his latest and it was doing well. It probably would have made him a wealthy man, but inheriting his father’s estate changed everything. A best selling author whose first novel had been turned into a long running Broadway musical, Chance’s father had been loaded. His New York Times obituary described him as the world’s most financially successful author.

Chance was his sole heir. So far the Choy Lee was his major concession to wealth. Built to his specifications, it was eighty-five feet long, with a full salon and a galley larger than a kitchen in an average house. In addition to the master stateroom, it had three guest staterooms each with a dresser, two chairs and a queen size bunk. There were three smaller cabins for overflow or whatever crew might be needed. The salon was large, gracious, luxuriously furnished, decorated with expensive curtains and upholstery. There were upper and lower bridges, the latest in navigational aids, outside decks with tables and chaise lounges and heavily padded swiveling fishing seats bolted to the deck at the stern.

Chance turned, facing me. He was a big man, well over six-five, covered with two hundred and fifty pounds of hard muscular fat and black, graying hair. Sporting a full thick beard on his chin, hair falling over his forehead and curling around the back of his neck, he wore cut off dungarees, a white linen vest and silver rings on each of his toes. Winnie-the-Pooh with a balloon was tattooed on his left arm, Piglet pushing a wheelbarrow on his right calf.

He moved away from the window, walked around the desk and flopped into the ancient canvas director’s chair I keep for my clients.

Frank James, high class private investigator with top of the line office furniture. He pounded the arm with his huge hand. The wood creaked, threatening to break under Chance’s weight. I shrugged and gave him a sheepish smile.

Spending money on expensive furniture would be a waste on all counts, I said. My clients don’t give a rat’s ass about the trappings of the office. When I have clients, besides, nothing lasts in this climate. Everything rusts, falls apart, even yachts.

He shrugged back. I don’t care, and I don’t care what my old man would have thought about the boat. I didn’t have anything to do with him before he died. He never sent me a penny and I never asked him for one. I’ve probably only seen him six times since I dropped out of Swarthmore in Fifty-six, and each time we’d argue about my life and how I wasn’t the exemplary son of a rich man. I’m not about to become the exemplary son of a dead rich man either. He left me the money because he didn’t have anyone else to leave it to and he wasn’t the type to turn it all over to institutions, or leave it to take care of a favorite cat. So I’ll just spend it the best way I know how, on spiffy boats, women I happen to be in love with at the moment, friends, and anything I see that I want and can get. I’ll get you some fine office furniture if you want it.

I don’t want fine office furniture, I said. But having lots of money isn’t a bad way to live,

Nope. Not bad at all.

I was about to say more when my phone rang.

James Security, I said.

Ah, Mr. James, a voice crackled through the static of the St. Ursula Cable and Wireless system. L. Arthur Parker, here.

I tried to make my voice sound like a smile. Good afternoon, Mr. Prime Minister.

He interrupted as I asked what he wanted. I am sending a very good friend of Mrs. Parker’s and mine to your office. Her name is Bailey Vandeventer and she should be on her way there now. I expect that you will extend her every courtesy and aid you can.

I looked over at Chance, rolling my eyes. When L. Arthur Parker asks, expatriate North Americans jump. It’s that, or risk being thrown off the island. I’ll do everything I possibly can. What’s the problem?

It would be inappropriate for me to say. However, if necessary, I will expect you to do more than you possibly can. Fair enough, Mr. James?

Fair enough, Mr. Prime Minister.

Good. I could hear the smile in his voice and imagine him nodding smugly on the other end of the line. It is also crucial that you not directly involve the government of St. Ursula in this matter in any way and that no one know Bailey is on the island. You will cooperate in that?

No problem. The answer came too glibly, and I remembered, too late, that I needed to be more cautious in dealing with the Prime Minister.

Good. I am sure we will be seeing one another soon. He hung up.

It didn’t feel fair, but fair doesn’t matter when dealing with L. Arthur Parker. I don’t quibble with him. He could have me deported for having too much gray in my beard. Civil rights for non-citizens on St. Ursula is not one of the Government’s high priority items. Besides, I owed him. It was L. Arthur Parker’s personal intercession that had resulted in my getting a permit to work in St. Ursula.

 Parker is slender and tall, his deep brown eyes flashing with sardonic intelligence. Educated in anthropology, languages and mathematics at Cambridge with doctorates in Medicine and Anthropology from Harvard, he’d been working on a post-doctoral fellowship at Berkeley studying social factors in disease when his father died and he came back to St. Ursula to oversee the family investments. He ran for the Legislature after a couple of years and is now in his fourth term as Prime Minister.

Shortly after his return he married Vivian Bothwell. Ronald Bothwell, her father, had been the British governor on St. Ursula in the mid-Sixties. He retired from the Foreign Service to a house he built on The Knob at East End, overlooking Deadman Beach, next to L. Arthur Parker and his daughter.

L. Arthur is not a bad Prime Minister. The Ursuline schools are excellent. The roads are in good repair and, with few exceptions, all paved. Garbage is picked up daily. The island has full employment and a humane, sensibly run social service program.

St. Ursula has done well under Parker’s ministry and he has done well as Prime Minister. He owns the island’s only hardware store, its only concrete business, a large private psychiatric hospital and ten percent of every business started by off-islanders since he came to office.

Our illustrious Pee Em? Chance looked at me slumped in my chair.

He’s sending a friend of the family over for help.

What family is that? Chance laughed. Many years before, back when Parker first returned to the island, Chance and he had been involved in some mutual and questionable businesses with some very questionable characters. A woman, Bailey Vandeventer, supposedly a good friend of his and Viv’s.

He slapped me on the shoulder. Well, pal, I’ll leave you to your job. Let me know what I owe you for all the security crap as soon as you figure it out and I’ll give you a check. Picking up his leather bag with the schematics, he headed toward the door.

There have been times when people weren’t too sure about your checks, I said.

He laughed. That’s right. Ain’t it a hoot? Now they’re begging for them. Edmund McRory down at the Chase Bank nearly scrapes his forehead on the pavement when I pass him down by the docks. Like I said, I love it, Frank. I love having money. If I was rich enough I’d have a bin where I could dive around in it like a porpoise, burrow through it like a gopher and toss it up and let it hit me on the head.

He was standing by the door, hand on the knob. Inflate the prices on the security stuff as much as you want Frank. There’s no point in my carrying all this dough to the grave.

I’ll give you the best break on cost I can, I said. One service, one price. You get the same rate Willis Penn would get.

That’s bound to be a good price. Willis could put an Obeah spell on anybody who tried scamming him. He waved and left the room, then leaned back in, holding the lintel with his left hand, tapping the bag against the doorjamb.

 "Don’t forget the christening party for Maybelline II on Friday."

Wouldn’t miss it for anything, I said, and I wouldn’t. Maybelline II is the most important thing to happen in Chance’s life in years.

After he was gone I cluttered my desk with papers so Bailey Vandeventer would see what a busy office I ran. Her name was familiar, but I couldn’t dredge up why or how.

Picking up the copy of Charles Bukowski’s Love is a Dog from Hell that Liz Ford had given me for my Christmas/birthday present, I tilted back in my chair, feet on my desk, and began reading his poem, tonight, for the ninth time. Chuckling at the poem, I looked at Liz’s inscription inside the front cover:

Frank,

Happy Christmas and Merry Birthday

I’ll be moving down soon.

Love, Liz

Happy Christmas and Merry Birthday indeed. Having December 25th as your birthday is a lifelong bummer. People double up on presents, letting one stand for two, and they always think they’re being original and clever by saying Happy Christmas and Merry Birthday. I love Liz Ford, and I’m happier than a pig in mud she’s moving to St. Ursula, but I hate that she gave me one present for two and was cute about it in the bargain. It conjured up too many disappointing holidays from my childhood. Disappointment was the one thing I could not bear coming from Liz.

There was a knock at the door.

Come in. I swung my feet to the floor, standing to meet Bailey Vandeventer.

She opened the door, stood there for three or four seconds, then walked across the room to my desk, right arm extended. She had a firm, quick handshake.

Mr. James, she said in clipped Boston tones. I’m Bailey Vandeventer. Artie and Viv tell me you’re the only private operative on the island.

Not exactly the highest of recommendations, is it? I gave her my best smile. I’m also probably the best poet around these parts.

Poetry has never interested me. Nor have private investigators. Indeed, I am not in need of private investigating. I may need protection and Artie thinks you might be somewhat more discreet and professional in providing it than the local constabulary. He also indicated that your license allows you to carry a gun, whereas the police on St. Ursula must request court permission to arm themselves.

 I do have a weapons license, and I might be more discreet than the island’s police. I sat down in my chair, put my feet back on the desk and studied her.

She was close to six feet tall, wearing an expensive white linen dress which accentuated her tan and clung to the smooth lines of her hips and outer thighs. Her eyes were the deep blue green of the Caribbean waters shimmering in Great Harbour just below my window. Her hair was light brown, sun-streaked with gold, parted over her right eye and swept back along the sides of her head where it curled behind her ears, then came forward to the bottom of her lobes where it curled again and fell to the middle of her neck. She wore pearl stud earrings, two finely tooled gold chains around her neck and three gold bracelets on each arm. Her fingers were free of rings. I looked again at her eyes. I wanted to see soft south sea nights there, and honey in the smooth tanned skin of her shoulders and arms. She stared back at me. The Caribbean waters of her eyes were filled with ice.

More to the point, Artie said you owe him. You will go out of your way to be discreet, will you not? When she spoke, disdain dripped from her lips.

I will if I agree to work for you. I was sparring with her. There was no question that I would work for her, discreetly, indiscreetly, anyway she needed. My tenure on the island depended on it. She already knew that.

Artie assured me you would agree.

Spinning around in my chair I looked out the window, watching a family of donkeys grazing on the lawn, two adults and a colt that looked as though he had dropped that morning. Tobias Gaines, owner of the Tabard Inn came rushing out, banging two blocks of wood together in an attempt at scaring them away before they dined on his bushes and flowers. They glanced at him and moved slowly to the far side of the property.

Turning back to the room, I spoke without looking at her. I find that women who don’t like poetry generally don’t like me.

My back still to her, I could hear the director’s chair on the opposite side of my desk creak as she sat. I turned to see her cross her legs, remove a gold case from her purse and take out a cigarette. Carefully placing it in an ivory holder she raised it to her mouth. Replacing the case in her purse, took out an ancient silver Ronson cigarette lighter, ostentatiously lighting an ostentatious oval Players cigarette. She snapped it shut, dragged deeply and let the smoke curl slowly from her nostrils. It was stagy B movie Lauren Bacall. I was torn between laughter and admiration. It takes some courage to perform a ridiculous act. She watched me through the haze of tobacco as she spoke.

Mr. James, I do not have to like you. I do not care for poetry and I am not generally attracted to bald men. She paused, as though lost in thought, then slowly shook her head. The truth is, I have never been attracted to a bald man. Further, I find sexual games and sexual activity, heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual, somewhat distasteful. I do not expect such issues will be of any concern in our relationship, which will be a professional one and, I hope, a brief one. There was not a touch of pleasantness or humor in her face.

Ms. Vandeventer, I believe it just ended. I spun my chair back around, resting my feet on the concrete shelf of the window to my right. The donkeys were still out there. Tobias was gone. He had obviously given up. Going to any extreme to chase donkeys away is looked at with some scorn by St. Ursulans who reguard them as symbols of independence and emancipation.

Ignoring me, Bailey Vandeventer continued.

Vivian Bothwell Parker and I were roommates for three years at Bennington. After graduation she undertook graduate studies in Biochemistry at Emory University. She finished her masters there, then returned to St. Ursula, met Artie and married him.

In spite of my anger at her attitude and my nearly visceral dislike of her, I was intrigued by their connection. Clearly, Vandeventer was no casual acquaintance of the Parkers and whatever was going on with her could be tricky for me. You and Vivian must be pretty tight if you roomed together for three years.

We’re very good friends, Mr. James, and over the years Artie has also become an extremely close friend. After graduation I returned to Boston and worked for an advertising agency. The work was boring and the pay unrewarding. Eventually I went into business for myself.

She took another long drag of the cigarette.

What did you do? I asked.

She tapped ashes on the floor, looking at me impatiently. I made a great deal of money, along with a number of powerful connections and enemies. That is why I am here, in your office, this afternoon. Two days ago, in Boston, someone tried to kill me. I have good reason to believe there will be another attempt on my life.

The same person, I asked.

Not necessarily. It could be the same one, then again the next try might be completely unrelated to the first one.

Reaching again into her purse, she pulled out several carefully folded pages from the Boston Herald, along with other newsprint and magazine pages. "Read this article, Mr. James. It is basically correct, though somewhat crude in its approach. When you’ve finished that read these from the Boston Phoenix and Boston Magazine. After that I am sure you will have some questions. I’ll do my best to answer them as we eat lunch."

I unfolded the Herald. The lead headline read:

Back Bay Bordello Busted!

Beneath that was a picture of Bailey Vandeventer, wearing stylish eyeglasses, a well-tailored wool suit and a pair of handcuffs, being led from the Boston Courthouse by two plain-clothes detectives.

My fee is two hundred a day, plus expenses, I said.

TWO

WE HAD LUNCH in the Tabard’s dining room, downstairs from my office. It’s a long wide gallery overlooking the Caribbean, one side walled, the kitchen beyond. The other three sides are open, one to a long sloping, palm shaded lawn, only the street separating it from the waterfront. The grass was short tufted and curly, striped with shadows from palm leaves, their patterns shifting as the trade winds blew across the channel shaking the treetops. A small herd of spotted goats grazed under the trees, mingling with the donkeys, the smallest ones sounding like human babies as they jumped and twisted across the grounds, keeping close to their mothers. Just behind us, to the right, the roofed section of gallery ended. Swim suited tourists sunbathed in chairs and chaise lounges scattered around a large freshwater pool, drinking pina coladas, rum punches and banana daiquiris supplied by white jacketed West Indian waiters who moved back and forth from the pool side bar to the pool side drinkers, gracefully avoiding the appearance of hustle and bustle as they catered to the hotel’s guests.

Tobias Gaines came to take our orders. I introduced him to Bailey. Bowing slightly from the waist, he took her hand, pressing the fingers to his lips. Then he turned to me.

Jolly good to see you in the dining room, old chap. All work and such you know does terrible things to Jack and Joe.

Less than five feet tall, Tobias had stringy black hair that looked eternally unwashed. A heavy black mustache was barely discernible against his dark olive skin. You had to squint to see his small goatee.

An Australian who had studied British style watching American B-movies, Tobias’ speech was peppered with jolly goods, rightos, bloody blokes and good shows, his manner equally peppered with clichéd gestures. Like kissing a woman’s hand. Chance and I were always chaps to him.

Years before, he tooled into Great Harbour on a sixty foot boat he had sailed from Auckland, New Zealand. He sold the boat, used the money to start the Tabard, putting up the building and developing the business over the years. A hard worker, a fine host, he served the best food on the island.

I ordered a bottle of Becks, a basket of conch fritters, a roast beef club sandwich on pumpernickel and a side of fries. Bailey asked for a glass of white wine and the chicken salad plate. As we waited for our lunch she placed another cigarette from the gold case into her ivory holder, lighting it as she continued talking.

I disliked the advertising world and I wanted to make a lot of money. My father’s a partner in a large Boston law firm. He makes over five hundred thousand a year, and that’s after paying his two hundred and thirty thousand in partner-ship overhead. How could I do less?

Tobias brought our drinks. I poured the Becks down the inside of my glass as she sipped the wine, her cold blue/green eyes staring over my shoulder toward the tourists around the pool. They were laughing, splashing one another, the stresses of their daily lives dissipating in the water.

So I went into business, one not unlike this business here, she gestured toward the pool with her wine glass. I made people comfortable and saw to the satisfaction of their needs.

"According to the Herald you ran a string of hookers. Your father must be tickled shitless about that."

He’s not pleased. He did admire the lifestyle it bought me until the double standards of the Boston political system put me out of business and displayed my face in newspapers, magazines and on television screens. The day after I was arraigned he called my apartment to say how disappointed he was in me. I had let the family down. I had let his partners down. The day before the arraignment we had lunch at the Copley and he had raved on about how proud he was that I was doing well. He was impressed by my house in the Back Bay, by my Rolls Royce, by all my trappings of financial success. You know, he never once asked me what I did. He simply assumed I was making it all in advertising.

I was halfway through the beer when she finished the wine, signaling to Tobias for another. He brought it and she drank half of it before I finished the beer. Bailey Vandeventer might have the polish of a Bennington education, she might be the successful businesswoman daughter of a hotshot Boston lawyer, and she might have eyes like Caribbean ice, but she was a busted madam and she was drinking a hell of a lot of booze before lunch. I figured I’d better get to the point with her before too many more white wines fuzzed her thinking.

I had to do my best possible work for her. Whatever else she might be, she was a close friend of the Prime Minister and his wife. L. Arthur Parker---I had difficulty thinking of him as the Artie Bailey had spoken of---was not one to disappoint.

Just what do you want from me, Ms. Vandeventer?

As I said, protection.

Protection from who?

I’m not sure. She shook the goblet, getting the wine moving in a clockwise motion. After a moment of silence she looked up from the glass and into my eyes. She spoke softly. Lots of people. Men.

She chugged