Bhatar Transfer: A John Shaddows Detective Mystery

Chapter 1

The Orange Blossom Special inched out of Penn Station like a hung-over bridegroom on the way to his own wedding. Very slow, and smooth. Engineer knew what he was doing. Or so thought someone whose preference was the mighty jet compared to the joggling luxury of the overnight sleeper.

But on looking around me on that tail end of a fogged in afternoon at the close of a cold, rain filled November, I wasn’t so sure. I liked the mainline ambiance: the old time elongated seat of the bedroom type compartment, fashioned from a roughhewn, mauve cotton fabric and convertible into a lower berth; the upper just above, of course, oval rounded into its allotted niche. The half dozen coats of a flat, cream green paint softened the overall effect.

Yes, I liked the creature comfort atmosphere created by this Pullman replica somehow out of place in the silver bullet design of the rest of Amtrak’s Deluxe ‘Special.’ I even admired the engineering of the reversible seat toilet, the fold up water basin above, now locked into place. There was the usual rubber fan above the aisle door, the mirror this side of it, and a string of stainless steel switches next to the inside door handle. To the right of that, from my place at the window, was a closed paneled door to the next compartment. There was only three of the old time Pullmans on this makeup, another being the diner just ahead that I passed on my way to car 171, bedroom F. mine was the last car on the train known as the caboose in railroadese, with a few bedroom compartments in the front half and the smoking lounge portion to the rear of it.

I was brooding at the time when it all started, I suppose, the knock on the door, watching the darkening gloom of the tunnel, wondering if the waters of the great Hudson River were going to, finally, this time, break through and swamp and inundate the train and me, I didn’t much care, really.

Got a message heah, suh. Or does you want me to sorta stash it under the door like?

Good God. Were the wet waters already up to the level of the doorsill? I decided not, pulled myself up from a slouched position, answered:

Come in, come in.

A porter of the old school entered, his crisp, white starched jacket setting, off the coal black of his face. His mouth was set into a permanent smile, large white teeth seemingly a third of his head. Sparkling red veined irises, pug nose and dark trousers atop spit polished black shoes completed the picture. I guessed his age as somewhere between 45 and 65.

You’s Mistuh Shaddows, ain’t you, suh? Ah means you’s the gennulmun goin’ t’ Miami, Ah believe.

That’s right.

Well, heah’s a message delivered, Ah might interpose, in a mos’ peculiar manner.

How’s that?

Ah means what if one of them Arabs, robes and all, sheets on their heads comes at you outta the blue doggone if I seen in come outta nowhere fo’ that matter steps up to five and a haf’ inches, eyeball to eye ball, and shoots that cardboard paper into yo’ gut so fast Ah thought it was a doggone shiv or somethin’. Ah means what would you do?

A formal invitational type of envelope dangled from his left hand.

He’s on the train, a passenger?

Oh yeah, he’ on the train, all right, but not my piece, thank the goodness. George’s got ‘I’m two cars forward, next to the diner, and bless em is all I say. By the way, my name’s James, at yo’ service.

Glad to know you, James.

Well, anything you want, drinks, juleps special of the ‘Special,’ I might interpose you just let me know. James is ready. Yes suh

With that he thrust the envelope in my hand, broadened the already stretched out smile, and without apparent knowledge of the Emancipation Proclamation turned and left. I held the envelope before me a moment, appreciating the flowering script.

The Hon. John Shaddows, Esq.

Personal

I had expected some signal, some sign from the contact, but not this soon and certainly not in the form of an apparently engraved notice. I opened the envelope with two fingers twitching, took out a stiff card with a neat round heraldry ensign picturing a lion’s head with a curved dagger in its teeth emblazoned at the top of the ash white paper.

Thursday 6:00 PM

My Dear Mister Shaddows:

This is to inform you that all is well, and that delivery shall be affected this evening, as discussed. Please be advised to make no effort to contact, or take notice of, your humble servant,

Abdul Hamad Gamal

(Representing His Highness)

Outside the light suddenly burst forth as the train emerged from the tunnel, blinding me momentarily, causing me to drop the note to the floor, where I let it lie. The lowlands of the Jersey Meadows were wet brown and desolate as the last luminescence of a dark cloud obscured the sun and permitted only faint outline to the general scene. The hurtling rick a rack racket of the wheels was less manifest now.

I needed a drink.

Chapter 2

The first quick sip of James’ double Gibson, frosted glass, lemon peel and three onions in the bottom and all had brought me back for another. Good as he looked, and sounded. Was he near retirement?

Once out of Newark Terminal I reflected further, glass in hand, as the train picked up speed and began racing through the near countryside. There are occasional factories on this stretch to Philadelphia, but the late autumn dusk obscured all but the outlines of those buildings, letting the dripping trees and leafless shrubs make the dominant impression.

I thought of Bradley Harrington, winced. He’d gotten me into this off center thing against my better judgment. When he told me of it, it sounded too extreme, exaggerated, unnecessary, and therefore dangerous. I don’t mind the danger, but only when it makes sense and there’s no other way to get about it. But this Arabian Nights mishmash was too far out for my taste, too Oriental, although Bradley had sounded convincing in the telling of it.

Bradley J. Harrington Jr. is a banker ‘friend’ of mine. That is to say I’ve seen him a couple of times, once did an errand for an old dowager customer of his bank’s trust department extracted her granddaughter from a drugged up love colony on the inland seaside of the Baja Peninsula and was rewarded by an invitation to cocktails at his Westport shorefront house, beautiful frosty wife, snotty friends and all. He even had me for a friendly drink at the Princeton Club one afternoon. We had nothing I could think of in common, except by coincidence the same travel agent, Iffy Calhoun, a pert trick of a Southern gal with the efficiency of an updated Apple.

Bradley’s a senior vice president of one of the largest banks in the world, First American, and when he asked me to pick up two million two hundred thousand dollars, cash money, in a satchel on an overnight train going south to Miami, and deliver it to somewhere in Nassau and the Caribbean, I had to appear interested, as that’s Assignments Inc., my business, but I was skeptical, to say the least.

He explained in some detail that the money was on deposit in his bank to the account of the Crown Prince son of the ruler of a Trucial Sheikdom called Bhatar, a midget island in the Persian Gulf a lot more people will be hearing more about. It seems the oil is now gushing out of the dunes of this place like there’s no end in sight, and the sale proceeds thereof are filling the coffers of certain of the larger New York banks some of it, that is, but only for a while. The Arabs have a penchant for cash, secrecy and switching around the likes of which is hard for Westerners to understand, Bradley explained. Suffice to realize, he continued, they have an urge to keep a ‘petty cash’ account on hand and in green bills that would make up the triple of a small bank’s annual net profits.

I began to go over in my mind his rather extended explanation of this somewhat unusual assignment, but at that moment the vapors of the Beefeaters were beginning to have their effects and a downright hunger set in. I therefore got smilingly to my feet and began to shuffle them along towards the diner, one car ahead.

The train had picked up to its full cruising speed by now and we were balling along close to eighty-five, I guessed, the new time sleeper swaying and rattling over the old-time roadbed, like a Greyhound bus speeding through an extended road under construction. Three times I was hurled against the sides of the aisle before moving six feet, each time grasping the brass handrail protecting the freshly scrubbed windows.

My compartment was the last one, in the center of the car, next to the bar and thus the lounge section, which brought up the rear. I had, therefore, to slowly traverse from Bedrooms F to A, passing the partly open door to E, next to mine, where I saw young feminine attire strewn neatly on the convertible seat bed facing mine, the partition in between. The heavy scent of musk filled the corridor.

I struggled open the door to the outside platform just as our end car whiplashed around a bend, making me fearful to try the intermeshing and screeching steel plates between the cars. Quickly remembering a three year old would do it, I hurried across the squiggling connecting pieces, closed the diner door and shut out the chugging railroad racket of the platform. I stepped into an anachronism.

Clean white tablecloths covered each of the twenty or so fastened down tables, hotel type cutlery jingling on them from the violent movements of the train. Two black waiters in the traditional white coated, black trouser uniforms were stutter stepping down the aisle from the kitchen at the other end of the diner, glossy steel trays held at the level of their heads, miraculously not spilling a drop of liquid on their way. The windows of this new diner were extra large horizontally, and extended more than the length of each table. The smells of Southern cooking that included fried stuffs, hot bread, fruit pies and freshly ground coffee beans filled the air. The place was packed with people.

A white Maitre d’ in railroad black, a third of the way inside, looked toward me and, without expression and without moving a finger, indicated I was to take the seat alongside him and next to a young woman looking down at her salad. I didn’t have a chance to appraise the lady until I was in the process of sitting down myself and she looked around and up at me, the faintest suggestion of a smile in her eyes. She had light green ones set in pure white orbits that flicked about like a frightened child’s, until, finally, they came to fasten into mine. She had a pretty face, beautiful when she was happy, I imagined, but with overlarge, sensuous lips that were open a fraction in repose. Her cream soft, pale brown hair was set in a somewhat long nineties’ permanent; in quick movements of her head it brushed across a light olive skin with that velvet like texture men prefer.

She wore a light brown Harris Tweed traveling suit, justly and fashionably cut. Her pale yellow silk blouse enclosed full and taut breasts.

There was little doubt of her ladylike demeanor and qualifications, and yet she was one of those creatures, or prisoners, of her own exaggerated sex: her every movement, gesture, sigh, her every sway was graceful, alive, meaningful, infused with the warmer, abstract promises of lovemaking. She was one of those women who attract men of all types and persuasions around her, like multiple mates surround the queen bee. She was maternal in an earthy, basic, eternal, changeable, sexual, not to be denied manner. I guessed her age to be around twenty-eight.

I was about to speak to this apparition, acknowledging her politeness to me, when she quickly turned her head and returned her full attention to the plate before her. So I took the menu offered me by the Head Waiter instead, and glanced down at this last apparent bastion of a classical Southern cuisine:

The Orange Blossom Special

*****

Black Bean Soup

Shrimp Cocktail, Romolade sauce

Fried Chicken, our way

Butterfly Steak, mixed herbs and butter sauce Barbecued Spare Ribs

Fried Snapper, Tartar sauce

Collards

Okra

Succotash

Butterbeans (Lima)

Salad

Hot Bread, Rolls or Sally Lund Peach Ice Cream, homemade (cream and fresh peaches) Pecan Pie

Apricot Turnovers, Brown Betty sauce

Coffee

Sanka

I felt like ordering the whole of it, but restraining myself I took one more beefeater, the black bean soup, spare ribs and the apricot whatever it was.

The two elderly ladies across from us seemed to sense a tension established between the refined one and myself. The old one by the window, dressed in a grey wool dress of no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever, nudged her black suited companion, and, with that smile women wear when they’re discussing either gossip or love, flicked a half dozen glances our way while whispering intently. The other smirked in return, blinking up at the girl, and me as if tasting something better than all that Southern cooking around us.

I was halfway through my gin, wondering why I felt I’d seen this exciting woman next to me before, when the white robed Arab started down the aisle. Most eyes turned in his direction, the flowing robes covering the whole of the walking space. The waiters pulled in between the tables to let him pass. He was all business. His horn-rimmed spectacles intensified a grim, tightlipped expression. Although his complexion was swarthy, he had a rather noble profile with his long hooked nose, strong rounded cheekbones, and a high imposing forehead. He was probably in his early forties, on the short side but well built, graceful. I could tell by the three cords of his headdress that he was of noble birth, but not of the highest.

The Arab potentate took an inside window seat at the table in front of us, facing the young woman and myself. He looked hard at us a moment, first me then her, without apparent self-consciousness, before turning to the menu handed him. From the speed and ease of his reading, he obviously knew English very well.

I was about to finally start up a conversation with my companion to my left, when a quite different type also entered from the opposite end, staggered forward.

This burly form, dressed in brown checkered coat, imitation flannels and a black and orange polka dot tie, upset two glasses of water on the second table right. His sledgehammer face with the dirty thug eyes never veered from the direction of mine and the back of the Arab’s head. He neither apologized for, nor acknowledged, his clumsiness to the people at the front table, but continued on like a great squat pulling guard until he was seated directly behind the Arab and facing the young woman and myself. He did not respond to the Head Waiter’s queries as to drink but stared on, about as subtle as a tendon freight car.

Terrible weather.

I was so intrigued by this parade of opposites, and the possible implications, I didn’t realize at first who was speaking. But turning to my left and seeing that smile intensified and those green grey eyes laughing,

I knew we had established contact, as they say.

Nice for ducks.

Not for people, not for me. I like the sun, she said, smiling even more.

Take it you’re heading that way. Miami?

No, actually, I’m going to Nassau, Lyford Cay.

That’s a coincidence. My first spot as well. Yes, that is interesting coincidence, I mean.

Her voice was soft syrup, Southern, probably Southwest, I guessed. It had a lingering, tasteful quality to it that said we’re friends, until I decide otherwise, that is. She seemed relaxed, with it, sure and full of herself as a person, purposeful for whatever purposes she might have in mind. Someone not to trifle with, nor to be ignored.

In Nassau for a day or two. Not sure after that.

You’re not sure, after that? You don’t know where you’re going, after that? she asked, I thought in a rather strong, precise way, turning more fully to look at me as she inquired.

That’s right. Day or two. Lyford Cay. Hear it’s a beautiful place.

Oh yes. You bet. I’ve been there once already. By the way, my name’s Sara Cunningham. She smiled a bit more as she made the introduction from a half turned around position, her face angled up at mine.

John Shaddows,

I accepted a rather large and strong, but feminine and sensitive hand’. In fact the girl was on the tall side, perhaps five nine and solid, not much excess, and she looked as if weight watching was not a problem.

Haven’t we met, I went on, somewhere? I get the feeling countryside, party, something.

"No. I don’t believe. It’s possible. I’ve been living in Darien, Connecticut. Do you get up that way…?

Then I remembered, my left shoulder shuddering slightly, inadvertently. Westport. I hadn’t met her exactly, observed her only, from a distance. Silk green dress, flowing, tightly fitted around the bust, laughing profile. Moved like a tigress, every motion, movement had meaning, vision, admiration. Hadn’t wanted to speak the soft green grass, yellow jonquils, bursting purple dahlias, stately elms, and the clashing colors of the crowd.

Inquired about her, didn’t know her name. Too bad. Even spoke to Bradley, later. He couldn’t distinguish, know whom I meant.

Speaking of Bradley Harrington, my banker friend, that is a coincidence, isn’t it, seeing her there, at his party. And now, on the train, going to Nassau Philadelphia coming into view just now, outside there, the dull red bricks of the dull old townhouse type of apartments, the rain and sleet of the early evening on the wet shining tracks. That’s a coincidence too, isn’t it, Nassau, Lyford Cay, the both of us.

Yes, a lot of pulling together of things.

Chapter 3

Let me put it this way, Bradley Harrington was saying, "the crude oil exporting nations you know, the Arabs, Venezuela, Indonesia, so forth will receive again this year about $115 billion dollars in oil revenues, or some $85 billion more than they received in 1973. In simple arithmetic, the damn price has gone up five times, five hundred percent. Now nearly half