Gene Desrochers - Dark Paradise (Boise Montague, #1)

dark paradise

Gene Desrochers

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Dark Paradise

First Edition

Copyright 2018 Gene Desrochers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from the author.

This story is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Cover design by Dane Low at E-Book Launch

ISBN-13: 978-1-947392-19-9 (Hardcover)

ISBN-13: 978-1-947392-16-8 (Paperback)

For Mindy

Chapter 1

S aint Thomas filtered into view as I peered out the Saab 340s window. White-washed shorelines dotted the west-end, distant palm trees bent, but never broke, in the off-shore winds. To the south, forty miles away, St. Croix crouched close to the horizon shrouded in hazy impressionist strokes. Along with St. John, they made up the U.S. Virgin Islands. If the world were flat, these islands would be the edge.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the eighth president of Mexico, took his third political exile in St. Thomas after losing more than half of Mexicos territory in the Mexican-American War. In my personal history, my plane trip home to St. Thomas would be known as Boise Montagues first emotional exile, after my stunning, but predictable, defeat in Los Angeles.

Most Saint Thomians were of African descent, brought over as slaves to harvest sugar cane. I suppose thats another difference between Santa Anna and me. He came from an elite Mexican military family. I came from African slaves and Europeans making babies together.

Id let myself go since Evelyn, my wife, had been murdered a year ago. Other than twenty extra pounds, baggy eyes from lack of sleep, a wild afro, and a sand-papery face, I looked great. Hazel eyes against high-yellow skin and jet-black hair gave me an exotic look, but people had trouble figuring where I fit into the racial divide. Someone who studied racial history would call me quadroon, or one-quarter black.

Pulling my lips back, I threaded a piece of dental tape between every tooth. I dragged the floss up and down three times on each side to the gum line. I kept my teeth as clean as a surgeons hands. Most dentists recommended a cleaning twice a year. My teeth were polished every three months. Id never had a cavity. As I pulled the floss out from between my back lower molars, I grinned. The sunlight caught the white enamel and my teeth glowed in the plastic window. No tragedy could stop me from maintaining flawless dental hygiene.

Murdered. The word stuck in my mind like a rock stuck in a drain. I couldnt prove it. The cops thought Evelyns death was an accident. The police threatened to arrest me for interfering in their so-called investigation.

The scent of mascara and lavender assaulted me. Seor Montague? the flight attendant whispered, her bronzed, Latina features hovering inches from my face.

Had I been speaking to myself out loud or something? Id never had a flight attendant mention me by name.

She tilted her round chin and smiled at my consternation with practiced ease. We are deplaning, Mr. Montague. She handed me my seat assignment slip that must have fallen on the floor.

I tried to push out of my seat to get a better look, but my seatbelt held me fast. All the seats in the plane were empty. Besides the captain and staff near the entrance and my flight attendant smiling at me with concerned patronage, I was the only person left. I tried to recover my cool.

Hey, uh, call me Boise.

I prefer Mr. Montague. You know, its mi favorita. All the romance and so forth, she continued.

Im sorry? I said.

The greatest literature the world has ever known, she paused dramatically, then continued, Romeo and Juliet , in any language. Shakespeare was a genius, no?

Yes, wonderful. Good old Willy. Ill get out of your hair now maam. I pushed past her and hurried down the air stair.

The heat slapped me like James Cagney smacking a woman in a gangster film. Waves of hot air oozed off the black tarmac. I turned in a circle, taking in my surroundings. Id returned to my birthplace for that feeling of belonging somewhere. The smell of salt in the air, drifting clouds always in the sky, the oppressive heat. I felt right about my decision.

A vast ocean surrounded the airport. Brewers Bay lay to the west, waves calmly lapping the sand. To the north, the Mahogany Run Golf Course rolled along below a giant block of rust-red stone my parents had claimed was a cistern. Nothing much had changed.

A person would have trouble finding St. Thomas on a world map. But, for hundreds of years, as went the Caribbean, so went the destinies of the most powerful nations on earth: France, England, and Spain. These little rocks were the hidden cornucopia that fed the beast of imperialism. St. Thomas possessed one of the finest harbors in the region, which made it a merchants paradise. And, because of its remoteness to any mainland nation, it was notoriously difficult to enforce laws.

Questionable characters migrated to these U.S. territories in search of wealth and freedom. The freedom to enslave, steal, smuggle, rape, and kill. To seize the obvious benefits of the United States financial assistance, but have the geographic and cultural distance that allowed easy, unfettered corruption. I needed to get lost in that unwanted riff-raff of humanity. I belonged in that world.

For now.

***

I FOUND A ROOM IN A local dive, dumped my luggage on the floor, then lounged about for a day, giving me time to reflect and gather my bearings.

Without my wife, my tether to a personal life had severed. Back in L.A., I worked as a private investigator for law firms, but the meat of life, relationships, dried up like flowers in the Mojave Desert. I hunted down evidence that exonerated our clients or helped win huge sums of money for plaintiffs in everything from personal injury suits to copyright infringement. If you needed it, I found it.