“Big deal, so he can’t deliver his coffee. So what? He brings it back with him, that’s all. Dried coffee beans’ll hold for months.”
John’s relatives were in the coffee business and he knew a lot about the subject. “But Vargas goes around acting like a, like a . . .” But his search for another metaphor to match his deflated balloon failed and he just shook his head. “I think, I just think . . .”
“You think there’s more going on here than meets the eye.”
“Right, and I think there’s more than coffee in that hold.”
“I gather we’re still talking about drugs?”
“Yeah, drugs. Sometimes they put cocaine or heroin inside sacks of coffee. You ever hear that? It makes it harder for the sniffer dogs to smell it. I tell you, I’d really like to have about twenty minutes alone in that hold.”
“John,” Gideon warned, “you’re not on duty here. You’re not in America here. You have no jurisdiction—”
John held up his hand. “I know, I know, I know. Just dreaming, that’s all.”
They wandered over to look at the nearby platform house. Through the open sides they could see that there were two hammocks strung crosswise to each other in the center, and that the shelves along one side held canned food, cups and plates, and cooking utensils. A half-full sack of rice leaned against one of the poles that held up the roof. It was impossible to tell how old the house was—it could have been five years, it could have been five days— but it looked very much as if it were currently being lived in. It must have been where the construction workers, or maybe the watchmen (who were perhaps the same) were housed, they concluded, as they sat heavily down on the front step.
“Doc, there’s something else that I can’t figure out,” John said, his elbows on the step behind them. “I did take a look at Scofield’s room this morning, just before I got off the ship.”
“And?”
“It was strange. His bed hadn’t been slept in. It hadn’t even been sat on; it was tight as a drum.”
“And this is strange why?”
“Well, the thing with Cisco happened at two in the morning, right? What was he doing, if he wasn’t sleeping?”
“Who knows? He’d had all that ‘tea’ of his. Maybe it put him to sleep up on the roof, all right, but interfered with his sleep when he came down later on. The way alcohol does. Maybe he was reading, or—”
“Where?”
“Where?”
“Yeah, where?” John said. “Where was he reading? His cabin is the same size as ours. There’s nothing in the damn thing but a bed. There’s no chair. There’s no
“Ah,” Gideon said, nodding. “I see what you mean. Maggie thought it came from his room, but it couldn’t have, could it?”
“That’s what I’m saying, right.”
“Well, it probably came from the cabin on her other side. We should—”
John was looking curiously at him.
Gideon looked back. “What?”
“
“Oh. Yeah, that’s right. Okay, maybe—”
They were interrupted by a shout from Phil, who was part of a knot of people—crew and passengers—standing in front of the warehouse’s scorched double doors.
“Hey, Gideon, come look. I think we have something in your line of work here.”
When Gideon, with John, got closer he saw that they were all peering at a round, silver-dollar sized object that appeared to be stuck or pinned to the outside of one of the doors. The crowd parted respectfully for him, then eagerly closed in again.
“It
“Well, let’s see . . .”
It was a glistening, perfect disk of—yes, bone—a little less than an inch in diameter, with a quarter-inch hole at its center; essentially, a ring of bone. It had been nailed to the wall through the hole in the middle. There was a very slight convexity to it, with the concave side pressed up against the wall. He ran a finger gently over it.
“Hmm,” said John, smiling.
“Hmm,” said Gideon.
“It could be an ornament of some kind,” Maggie declared when she grew tired of waiting for something from him beyond “hmm.” “A pendant, perhaps; part of a necklace.”
