Twenty Blue Devils

'BOOM-BOOM!” she bellowed as the reverberations died away.

'That's three times in three minutes,” Gideon said, his head ringing. “Maybe we ought to move away from the bar. What do you say to the terrace?'

'Amen,” said John, picking up his glass.

After the wild scene in Nick's office they had not managed to get together again until almost five in the afternoon. They had gone to the Shangri-La's bar to talk things out undisturbed, only to find the place jammed. Thursday, it seemed, was half-price-happy-hour day, and the bar was packed with locals, mostly couples consisting of merry, matronly, spreading Tahitian women and their lean, aging French husbands, lined, taciturn men who smoked their cigarettes down to quarter-inch stubs and concentrated on getting quietly sloshed.

The specialty drink of the day, at only 100 French Pacific francs, was Boom-Booms, every order of which was accompanied by a ceremonial clash of cymbals and the full-throated cry of “Boom-Boom!” Out of curiosity Gideon had asked one of the bartenders what went into one and listened appalled as he was told: light rum, dark rum, brandy, vodka, curacao, mango juice, papaya juice, passion fruit juice. And a sprinkling of grated chocolate on top.

'Wow, not bad for a buck,” John had murmured, but although he had wavered perceptibly for a few moments he had sensibly stuck with beer.

The atmosphere on the terrace was more pleasant by far. An afternoon rain squall, still visible to the west, had swept through a few minutes before, bringing out the perfume of a hundred different kinds of flowers and leaving the slate paving stones shimmering with reflections from the sky.

'All right,” Gideon said as they sat themselves at an umbrellaed table, “how do we know that Tari didn't get greedy before Brian died? How do we know it wasn't Tari who killed him to get him out of the way? Or maybe Tari was already skimming, and Brian caught on to him, and Tari murdered him to keep him from telling.'

'No good,” John said. “If Brian found out something like that, how could Tari afford to wait until he went off on his vacation? He would have had to kill him right away, before he had a chance to tell anybody else. The way he tried to do with Rudy.'

'That's true,” Gideon said. “How is Rudy, by the way?'

'A little shell-shocked, but not too bad. They're keeping him in the hospital overnight to play it safe. I dropped in on him for a while. All he wants to do now is get out of here and go back to Whidbey Island where it's nice and quiet.'

'You can't blame him for that.'

'No.” He moved his bottle of Hinano from place to place on the table, leaving interlocking rings of moisture. “Listen, there's something else I want to say about Tari. This is a guy I got to know pretty well over the years, and I always thought he was okay. Yeah, I can see him, you know, yielding to temptation and maybe skimming a little off the top, I can see him panicking when he got caught, I can see him flying off the handle, I can even see him losing it altogether and trying to blow Rudy away—but cold-blooded, premeditated murder? Uh-uh, I just don't see him sneaking up on Brian and slitting his throat.'

After a few seconds he added: “Let alone being in on all those other goofy ‘accidents.’ It just wasn't his style, the poor bastard.'

'You're probably right” Gideon sipped his wine and watched the gray, slanting threads of the retreating squall roil a patch of ocean, heading for Moorea. “Besides, we know he wasn't in on those accidents. Not the one with the jeep, anyway.'

John frowned. “How do we ‘know'?'

'Because he wouldn't have been dumb enough to be right there in the jeep with Brian when it went over the side. He almost got killed himself.'

'That's a good point, Doc. I forgot all about that.'

'Afternoon, gents.” It was Dean Parks, convivial host. “Thought I'd let you know the Leaky Tiki's about to embark on the evening sunset cruise. All aboard that's going aboard. Real peaceful-like, why don't you give it a try?'

John and Gideon looked at each other. “Why not?'

* * * *

Peaceful the Leaky Tiki wasn't. Essentially an awninged platform mounted on two large outrigger shells, it included a bar that continued to dispense Boom-Booms (happily, without the cymbals), and although the Frenchmen merely sank into a deeper gloom, their wives got louder and more talkative, and a contingent of soused Chileans chimed in with a jolly medley of South American songs of death, betrayal, and revenge.

Still, Gideon and John found a relatively quiet place at the rear, sitting at the edge of the platform with their legs dangling, their feet not quite touching the water. From there, with their backs to the others, they sat looking out on a scene so gorgeous that it drowned out the hubbub behind them. They were putt-putting slowly through the lagoon in water that varied, depending on its depth, from bright, pure yellow to green, to aquamarine, to vivid, almost purple indigo. When they looked down they could see schools of small striped fish, yellow and purple and red, wheeling in a body through the clear water. And always in the distance, the strange, moonscape-silhouette of Moorea, with the sun abruptly disappearing behind the tallest peaks so that an incredibly colored sunset suddenly flared as if someone had just flung open the door to a colossal blast furnace.

It was only when the spectacular display began to dim a few minutes later that John spoke.

'I've been thinking about Brian.'

'Mm.” Gideon was still off somewhere behind the mountains of Moorea.

'I made some phone calls about him this afternoon.'

'Phone calls,” repeated Gideon, watching the last of the colors fade quickly to rose and then to mauve.

'Yeah, come on, wake up, will you? I was trying to do your work for you.'