Shooting Script by Gavin Lyall

Author:Gavin Lyall
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Crime
ISBN: 9781448210800
Publisher: Coronet Books
Published: 1966-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

I GOT THE MITCHELL OFF the ground just before the first airliner from Miami got in, and had an interesting flight to Port Antonio — nearly fifty miles east along the coast from Ocho Rios — with the loose hydraulic pipes sealed off with corks and the wheels hanging down all the way.

But at least J.B. had been right about the newspapermen: they were filling the Myrtle Bank like thirsty locusts when I got back in the afternoon, queueing up on the bar stools to borrow the phone and ring home to say it was a great story and send more money.

They were right, too, although the best of it was in the diplomatic rumpus, which mostly by-passed Jamaica. Venezuela kicked off by sounding worried about the safety of its citizens, but a little embarrassed about them turning out to be Republica revolutionaries. The Ingles/Jiminez family was less inhibited, and came in calling the Republica régime several things — all of which were probably true, but hardly rare in that part of the world. And dead on cue, the Republica boosted its own tough image by carefully muddling who’d insulted them and inviting Venezuela to step outside and say that again — remembering, of course, that ‘outside’ was a safe 500 miles of sea.

That took the first two days, after which the Ministry of Foreign Insults in each country handed the file down to the clerks to keep the row going for the usual fortnight with the usual notes and leaks.

With all this going on, nobody even tried to tie Whitmore in with the political side of Diego’s death. After all, you don’t suspect Hollywood of revolutionary politics any more than you do the Catholic Church. Sure, some film stars have friends on the shady side of the street, but how about the Church in its time? In Hollywood, a rebel is still a man who drives a Porsche instead of a Jaguar and comes to cocktail parties in a dirty tee shirt.

Even I got off lightly. The newspapermen came in with a fixed idea about me: with my Korean experience, I was obviously a restless-war-hero-looking-for-trouble. But that itself made me conventional and dull — they’d spent years writing the same story about pilots who’d flown for or against Castro. With the diplomatic fuss, the family angle and Whitmore there wasn’t much room for me anyway.

Nobody went near Port Antonio.

Come Sunday lunchtime most of the journalists had got all the local colour, heat, and smell they could stand from Kingston and had either flown home or evacuated to the north coast to pester Whitmore. So I was quietly waterlogging my sorrows in the Myrtle Bank when J.B. came on the phone telling me to turn out and help a company car meet the five o’clock plane.

Apparently somebody from the Jiminez/Ingles family was flying in from Caracas to collect Diego’s body, and since the film company was shooting that day, it was thought that I’d add tone to the proceedings by forming a guard of honour.

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