Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“Yeah, but I’ve got a sweater.” She reached into her beach bag and found one.

The silvery gray sky wavered between day and night.

“A sunset to die for!” Shauna raised her wineglass to the ever-changing froths that lit the sky.

They all watched in awe as the sky trembled between red, peach, orange, gold, violet.

“Like flames.” Shauna settled herself against Jude, who put his arm around her.

“Not long, now,” Tom said.

Darkness, with the slim smile of a moon, starlight, and glowing sea, descended.

Suddenly, Jude sat up straight. A gun sprang from his pocket and into his hand.

Carolina and Tom blinked at the sight. “What have we here?” Carolina asked, the remaining half of her sandwich, chicken with avocado and a slice of tomato, in one hand, limp. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing personal,” said Jude, not high, not the least bit affected by the multiple alcoholic beverages he had previously appeared to suck down.

Shauna, a little less on the ball, eyes a bit blurred, stood up, knocking back her last glass of wine. She tapped the empty glass against a bench, then watched it break. “Sorry,” she said.

Carolina stood up.

“We’ll give you a fighting chance,” Shauna said. “Yours for ours.”

“You’d put us on that piece of junk?” Tom asked. “You survive and we drown?”

Jude said nothing, just nudged them to stand.

“We walk the plank and drown,” Carolina said. “You play pirates.”

“We do what we hafta,” Shauna said.

Walking Carolina toward the leaky, tethered Whaler, Jude pressed a gun to her back. A scrim of water shined in the bottom. “I’m grateful to people like you. Do-gooders.” After opening several bins and searching quickly, he found rope.

“Tie us up?” Carolina said. “You want us to die?”

“Here be dragons. I guess when you booked your honeymoon, you didn’t consider that.” Jude tried to wrap her wrists but since he was holding a gun, couldn’t. He motioned Shauna over to help.

“You’re smugglers. You steal boats. You kill people for drug money,” Carolina said.

“You have a fighting chance!” Shauna said.

Jude pushed the gun hard into her back. “Rich bitch.”

Shauna offered up an apologetic shrug, then looped nylon rope around Carolina’s wrists.

Carolina twisted quickly and kicked Shauna’s knee out from under her. Shauna fell.

Jude, startled, momentarily lost position, then aimed at Carolina. Behind him, Tom lunged. Smoothly, he grabbed the gun out of Jude’s hand and turned it on him.

Carolina wrestled free of the nylon ropes holding her wrists. She jumped up and pulled Shauna into a headlock.

“What the hell!” shouted Jude, staring down the barrel of his own gun, held by Tom, pointed at his face.

Sirens sounded.

Tom swiveled the younger man around, then pulled Jude’s hands behind his back, locking them in cuffs.

Shauna, quicker to recover than expected, stood, smacking Carolina’s head with a tightly balled fist. Then, while Carolina reeled, ignoring the gun pointed at Jude’s head, Shauna threw herself toward Tom.

Tom’s right arm struck her on the fly. She collapsed heavily onto the deck, panting, looking up at him, teary-eyed with pain.

Carolina jumped onto Shauna. Shauna wriggled and fought until Carolina pinned her like a wrestler to the deck. She cuffed her.

Tom and Carolina sat the two down on a bench a few feet apart from each other, where they drooped unhappily in the brilliant moonlight.

“Honeymooners?” Shauna frowned. Tom and Carolina faced the younger couple, each holding a gun, pointing steadily at their chests. “I could swear he French kissed you.”

Carolina didn’t react.

“I hope the money makes up for those ugly big, wet lips of his slobbering all over you.”

“Who are you people, anyway?” Jude asked, leaning against a cushion, legs shaking slightly, eyes narrowing. “You don’t sound local.”

“Special Ops,” Carolina said. “We’re out of St. Thomas, working along with the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force.”

“We hunt pirates,” Tom said.

Carolina picked up her fallen sarong and tied it around herself all the way up to her chest, the Caribbean’s version of New York City’s bulletproof vest.

Aerial view: Brilliantly lit boats rock and blaze over the black sea toward the yacht at center, from all directions.

One Confession Too Many by Luis Adrian Betancourt

Translated by Donald A. Yates

Passport to Crime

Luis Adrian Betancourt is one of Cuba’s best-known crime writers and critics, with many novels and stories in print. His first appearance in translation was “Guilty” (EQMM 3–4/ 04). Here he is with a contemporary police tale; private eye stories do not exist in Cuba, where all sleuthing is done by state agencies!

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