large liquor store painted like a giant Kalik label that’s visible from a mile at sea. Wooden garages line the road leading from the dock, most housing vehicles used by Spanish Wells residents during their visits to “mainland” Eleuthera. It’d be the perfect place to commandeer a car, as it might take a week or more before anyone noticed it was missing. All of the padlocks looked intact, though.
We tried calling around the island to see if anyone had heard anything new. Petagay got momentary cell service, then lost it. The islands were having more than their usual hefty share of phone and electrical issues. A pleasure boat off Briland had snagged an underwater cable with its anchor and unplugged almost all the islands’ communications for three days. Additional power grid problems also kept cutting electrical as well as cell phone service. Colt, once again, was catching some lucky breaks.
Petagay and I then drove to Three Island Dock—or as most tourists hear the Bahamian pronunciation, “Tree Island Dock.” Here, a small limestone peninsula forms a protected lagoon that’s home port for a fleet of small taxi boats that connect North Eleuthera to Harbour Island via a $5 two-mile ride. As usual, a couple of boat drivers sat on the cement seawall talking sip-sip (gossip) with the van drivers who link the dock to the rest of Eleuthera.
“Yeah, he messed with my boat Wednesday night,” said a burly driver with the sitcom name of Ricky Ricardo. “The tools he used is still in there.” Ricky said three boats had been messed with over the course of two nights. “He really tear up that Bertram there, cut up the wires, fool with the ignition, do something to the engine and the gas… The guy couldn’t run it for the whole day, had to call out a mechanic.”
The Bertram, a twenty-eight-foot classic sportfisher, had a complicated ignition that required both a key and a safety switch, which Colt wasn’t able to figure out. Ricky’s boat was a twenty-four-foot cuddy cabin set up to ferry a dozen people back and forth to Briland. None of the boats was Colt’s preferred style.
“He took one of the key switches and he try to take my batteries. I had the terminals on real tight and he couldn’t get them off so he tried to cut the wires. Why he try to take my battery?” Ricardo asked.
I shook my head. Unlike the Abacos, where there are as many boats as cars, Eleuthera has only a couple of marinas and they both lay south, miles away. There were boats around the north end that fit Colt’s predilection for speed and style, but they were across the bay at Harbour Island. He’d need a boat just to get over to the better selection. That explained the attempts on the taxi boats. Why, though, try to take a battery?
Ricky Ricardo said he’d actually seen Colton on Wednesday night. “He was walking to the dock, tall guy, short brown hair, no shoes—and that’s what I noticed because I only ever know two white guys who walk on the road barefoot.”
Ricardo said other boat drivers had also seen the Bandit. “He was sea bathing in the evening, floating in the cove around the corner… just seem like a young man, just a tourist.” They took notice because the cove is lined with ironshore—limestone bank eroded into chisel-sharp points easily capable of slicing through skin. Only the toughest leather-bottomed bare feet could make it across even a short patch of ironshore without being shredded.
The police eventually showed up with a flyer featuring Colt’s picture, and the boat drivers ID’d him.
ACROSS THE PIER FROM the taxi boats lies the tropically painted and grandly named Coakley’s International Sporting Lounge. Coakley’s consists of a small rum shop with a large covered patio and a pool table that provides the sport. Petagay and I pulled out two of the half dozen bar stools and ordered Kaliks. The name of the local beer comes from the sound of a cowbell, one of the most important instruments, along with whistles and goatskin drums, that create the Bahamas’ frenetically loud Junkanoo music.
Denaldo Bain pulled a couple of cold ones from a glass-front fridge that provided the brightest light in the nice, dark bar. Behind Denaldo, shelves held maybe a hundred liquor bottles, mainly rums. A TV suspended in the corner played a Schwarzenegger movie. Jamaican reggae pumping out of the stereo mercifully drowned the one- liners.
I asked Denaldo, who lays down rap songs when he’s not tending bar at Coakley’s, whether anything strange had happened on his side of the dock in the last few days. He said there’d been a break-in Wednesday night.
“What was taken?”
“Water, Gatorade, snacks… ”
“Any rum?”
“Nope.”
Colt.
“I know he was watching TV, too,” said Denaldo. “I came in the morning and the remotes and my chair were moved.”
Maybe Colt sat down to check to see if he was still making news. Denaldo pointed out the section of screened wall cut out so the Bandit could climb into the patio. After that, he said, Colt jimmied a deadbolt to get into the rum shop. He said that the same night, someone had also hit the administrative building at the center of the dock.
Denaldo, who lives across the water on Briland, said he’d also spotted Colt. “I saw him when I was closing up Wednesday night about ten o’clock. He was just about to go into the water. He stood up a little when we saw him—tall guy, slim, just shorts, bareback. The water taxi man was saying that the night before, someone trifle with the boats. So we look at this guy and no, no, not him, he wouldn’t trifle with the boats, didn’t look that way. This is just a tourist, just a tourist having fun. You know: love yourself. When we drove off, he went into the water.”
When the police came out to investigate the break-in at Coakley’s, they never mentioned the Barefoot Bandit and suspected the burglar was just a local troublemaker.
I ordered another Kalik and asked Denaldo what exactly had been taken. He pointed to cartons of bar snacks on top of the drink fridge. “He got Honey Buns and some of the Planters Go Packs, but his favorite was the Snickers.”
Ah, Snickers, the candy bar that fueled fifty burglaries. If he lived through this, I could see Colt’s first endorsement deal: “It’s tough staking out airports and marinas all night, so when I need an energy boost, I pull out a Snickers.”
“How about the drinks?” I asked.
“He took a few bottles of water and a couple Gatorades,” said Denaldo. “Oh,” he suddenly added, “and a few Heinekens and Kaliks.”
Regardless of whether Colt actually took the beers (which I kinda doubt), it was very interesting that he hadn’t emptied the place out. Why not fill his entire backpack with Snickers and water? If he’d been willing to carry a boat battery he could certainly handle a dozen bottles of Fierce Grape Gatorade to keep himself hydrated, and more Snickers to keep himself topped up on nougaty goodness. To me, that meant either he already had a campsite or an empty home stocked with food and water… or else he was supremely confident in his ability to forage what he needed whenever he needed it.
I looked up at all the candy bars and pastries Colt had left behind. “He’s going to come back here,” I told Denaldo.
He didn’t seem concerned. They’d put up some plywood over the one torn screen, but that left another forty feet of patio screen for Colt to slip through. And he’d already proved that the door lock was no contest. From Colt’s experience over the last few days, he must have thought things shut down early on the dock, leaving him plenty of dark hours to come back and raid Coakley’s and maybe take another shot at a taxi boat if he hadn’t found one elsewhere.
Tonight would be different, though, because of all the parties happening and people moving back and forth among islands. I wondered if Colt knew that.
I finished my beer and looked at the rum display. This would be a fine place to wait for Colt. I’ve spent many amiable afternoons that stretched into pleasantly lost evenings inside Bahamian rum shops. You order a bottle for your table and the bartender keeps you supplied with Cokes or fruit juice mixers. It’s one of the best ways to meet people because, like pubs in Ireland, Caribbean rum shops serve as the social centers of every small village.
Petagay broke my reverie, saying she was starving. I bought her a Honey Bun.
“No thanks,” she said. Cell service had popped up momentarily and her phone buzzed in a couple of messages. Two stories were floating around the island. “Some people are saying a boat was stolen today down in Governor’s Harbour. Others say a boat is missing from Harbour Island.” Denaldo added that he, too, had heard about a boat theft in Governor’s.
It was close to 10 p.m. Governor’s Harbour was a forty-mile drive south. Harbour Island was a ferry ride
