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3: The Tempting Twins

Big Tom was daydreaming. Pinned to one of the oversized drafting tables in his office was a schematic of his latest creation, the Lucia. He could take in everything from here: this penciled beaut tacked down before him, and the shipyard outside where she was actually built—the past, present and future.

He leaned his large belly into his walking stick and again and again savored every detail of sailing perfection. A shipbuilder may father hundreds of handsome and servicable craft in his good years, but rarely does he experience the sweet satisfaction of having spared nothing—time, materials and design—to build a skimmer absolutely right. The Lucia, he told himself, was the perfect blending of the forces of nature and the needs of man.

Just below there in the shipyard, over the veranda rail and down near the bay, were the drydocks where she painstakingly took shape. It was the ideal, linear shipbuilding layout: From the offload dock, into the yard of lumberstock, into the millhouse, and out to the construction yard, the long and awkward timbers never needed to be turned, not even at a right angle, on their path to becoming a sea skimmer.

It was from this office that Big Tom watched the Lucia's delicate skeleton rise and her graceful body fill in over the months. Meticulous craftsmen would spare no effort under the burning scrutiny of the Caribbean's most powerful—and brutal, some say—tradesman. And just down the dock from the shipyard was the empty slip that the Lucia would return to any day now with new cargo. Maybe even this afternoon.

For a monied man like Big Tom it took a conscious effort to maintain the casual, bare-wood atmosphere in his office. He liked the dirt-kick quality. One of his wives would appear at the rear entrance with a northland wool rug, or a porcelain nude maybe—some campaign to bring civilization to the workplace. His hands would flutter like spooked herons—"Blast it! Take it to the mainhouse." And then her face would wilt into a scowl and he'd have to figure out how to make it up to her. Some nice smoke, or the powder, maybe.

He liked it here—the weathered-gray planking, the encircling veranda and the louvered doors pushed open on all sides. Here, he could think like a seaman, not some blubber-butt monk.

Out the east and west windows loomed the steep slopes of Crown Mountain, arcing around to form the bay, God's amphitheater. His office was a simple structure set into the base of the mountain, stilts out front, one story, a roof done in curved red tile salvaged from one of the ancient hotels gone to rot. From this spartan shelter he commanded Thomas Island and the largest known shipping line, Thomas Exports.

Big Tom lit a cigarette—fine mainland tobacco, machine rolled even, one of the silly luxuries he had come to allow himself. He exhaled, and the satisfying sting webbed onto the tip of his tongue. He was turning his jowly face back to the schematic of the Lucia when Bishop shuffled in on sandals, drawstring pants low on his gaunt hips.

"You look pounded," Big Tom said. "'Nother night sucking ale bottles at Sanders's, I'd say." His jaw muscles bulged rhythmically. He drew again on the cigarette. "Well, we can't have it both ways—can we?—your kinda social life, and on toppa that a job what's supposed to start at first light. You look pounded! Like New York City musta looked on Big Bang Day."

Bishop, five feet tall, rolled his eyes up at Big Tom painfully. "Sorry," he muttered. He was walking haltingly toward a round table in the corner, as if he had an equal limp in each leg. There a beaker of hot coffee perched on its rack over a candle stub. Big Tom watched the slow agony, the quivering hand taking the beaker and pouring sloppy spurts into a stained mug.

Bishop slurped, paused, felt no better, and slurped again. "I am sorry ta be late on ya," he said. His eyes stared dully into the room at nothing in particular. Bishop seemed to be searching in misery for each word, even the easy ones. "It was really work, ya know, ya could look at it like that—I was doin' a job what needed doing, that mess with the tug captain."

Big Tom's face relaxed, the folds of flesh easing down again. "You were working on our problematic Captain Bull? What, got 'im drunk—now he's hung over as you? Wouldn't be the first time he took to sea hung over, I'd say." He pointed a fat finger out the window. "The Lucia's still not in, ya see. If you bought us any time at all, well it ain't enough."

Bishop looked hurt. "I done better." He slurped. "I done better than that. I tole him we need a day was all, and he said no. He's got a Government schedule up and down the mainland coast what he can't break. He doesn't care that we got forty some red-leggers coming in any minute—that we'd have to feed 'em for a month 'fore he got back. Said he'd leave today with whatever we got already, he'd put off with an empty barge or two if he had to. These Government guys. . .."

Big Tom was nodding. He heaved into the walking stick, hobbling to a chair where he sat heavily and picked at the stuffing. "We hold red-leggers a month in the cells they'd rot away. Subtract the cost of feeding 'em well. . .." He stared at the ceiling, calculating. "They wouldn't be worth coconuts by time we sold 'em. Government wouldn't give us coconuts for 'em, nope. Timing, this business is timing. Some day, mayhap, the day will come that we can touch mainland with our own ships, our own cargoes, and pig-poke the Government. Ach."

"Ya, I tole him all that about the feed costs, and he didn't give a whit," Bishop said. "So I says to him that it's okay. We value his business—our official pipeline to the mainland—so much that we wanted him to have a send-off present, even if he couldn't wait."

Big Tom stopped picking at the stuffing. His eyebrows rose.

"Two fourteen-year-olds. Twins. I tole him I knew two teeners what would service him in any way was his pleasure."

"Girls or boys?"

"Girls. So I says let's have a few beers at Sanders's Shebeen, they gonna meet us there sometime, I dunno when. . .."

"You don't know any twins like that. Not on Thomas Island."

"But he don't know that." Bishop gulped now at the coffee. It was cooler. "So we get piss drunk at Sanders's waiting for the two kids—'Where are they?' I keep saying. 'They'll be here in a bit, I'll buy a couple more ales meantime.'"

Big Tom was starting to see it now. "I feel a fight coming on. . .."

Bishop grinned slightly through his stupor. "Right," he said. "Eventually, Captain Bullshit is coming back from the can, zipping up with one hand an' a bottle in the other. He's taking a swig an' he bumps into a table where Eric and Larry—the shrimpers?—they're playing chess and a coupla pieces get knocked over. And then Captain Bull gets knocked over and—well, when he wakes up today, he'll find himself in the brig owing Sanders 10,000 centimes for damages."

"There isn't 10,000 worth in the whole shebeen. If you broke every chair and every bottle, well, 5,000 centimes at most."

"Ya, but that's what Sanders is asking, 10,000. Hey, it could take days to negotiate him down. An' you gotta talk to the brigsman today—none of this bend-rules-for-the-captain, uh-uh."

"So Sanders and Eric and Larry are all in on this."

"Oh ya. It was quite a trick movin' that table in that captain's way, but we'd a gotten a fight going somehow."

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