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“So? I have committed no offense. You break into my house—London will hear of this, Mr. Dillon. You will regret this morning’s work. I have lawyers.”
“Good,” said McCready. “You may well need them. Now, I want to interview your staff, Mr. Johnson—your election assistants, your associates. One has been kind enough to escort us to the door. Please bring him in.”
The two police sergeants picked up the gatekeeper, whom they had been supporting between them, and dropped him on a sofa.
“The other seven, if you please, Mr. Johnson, with their passports.”
Johnson crossed to an onyx telephone and picked it up. The line was dead. He put it down.
“I intend to summon the police,” he said.
“I am the police,” retorted Chief Inspector Jones. “Please do as the Governor asks.”
Johnson thought it over, then called upstairs. A head appeared at the upper banister. Johnson gave the order.
Two men in bright shirts emerged from the verandah and stood beside their master. Five more came down from the upper rooms. Several muffled female squeals were heard. There had apparently been a party going on.
Inspector Jones went around collecting their passports. The man on the sofa had his own removed from his back pocket.
McCready examined them all, one by one, shaking his head as he did so.
“They are not forgeries,” Johnson said with quiet assurance, “and as you see, all my associates entered Sunshine Island legally. The fact that they are of Jamaican nationality is irrelevant.”
“Not quite,” said McCready, “since all of them failed to declare that they have criminal records, contrary to Section Four, Subsection B-1, of the Immigration Act.”
Johnson looked dumbfounded, as well he might. McCready had just invented the whole thing.
“In fact,” he said evenly, “all these men are members of a criminal conspiracy known as the Yardbirds.”
The Yardbirds had started as street gangs in the slums of Kingston, taking their name from the backyard where they held sway. They began in protection racketeering and earned a reputation for vicious violence. Later, they developed into purveyors of hemp and the cocaine-derivative crack and went international. For short, they are known as Yardies.
One of the Jamaicans was standing near a wall against which a baseball bat was leaning. His hand slowly crept nearer to the bat.
Reverend Drake caught the movement. “Hallelujah, brother,” he said quietly, and hit him. Just once. Very hard. They teach many things in Baptist colleges, but the short-arm jab as a means of converting the ungodly is not one of them. The Jamaican rolled up his eyes and slid to the floor.
The incident acted as a signal. Four of the six remaining Yardies went for their waistbands beneath their beach shirts.
“Freeze! Hold it!”
Newson and Sinclair had waited until the upper floor was vacated, except for the girls, before coming in through the windows. Now they were on the upper landing, machine pistols covering the open area below. Hands froze in mid-movement.
“They daren’t fire,” snarled Johnson. “They’d hit you all.”
Favaro came across the marble floor in a roll and rose behind Marcus Johnson. He slid his left hand under the man’s throat and dug the barrel of the Colt into his kidneys.
“Maybe,” he said, “but you go first.”
“Your hands above your heads, if you please,” said McCready.
Johnson swallowed and nodded. The six Yardies raised their hands. They were ordered to walk to the wall and lean against it, hands high. The two police sergeants relieved them of their guns.
“I suppose,” snapped Johnson, “you will be calling me a Yardbird. I am a citizen of these islands, a respectable businessman.”
“No,” said McCready reasonably, “you’re not. You’re a cocaine dealer. That’s how you made your fortune. Running dope for the Medellin cartel. Since leaving these islands as a poor teenager, you’ve spent most of your time in Colombia, or setting up dummy companies in Europe and North America to launder cocaine money. And now, if you please, I would like to meet your Colombian chief executive, Señor Mendes.”
“Never heard of him. No such man,” said Johnson.
McCready thrust a photograph under his nose.