In the same way that no one in their right minds volunteers for a death sentence, no one likes to be a scape goat. Especially when you are hard pressed to avoid noticing the fact. If you had missed the trial, during which my character was torn apart like a pinata on a small child’s birthday, you could hardly miss the reports in the news papers. As in so often, the newspapers were full of it, and for once I don’t just mean metaphorically. When high paying guests at the most unique hotel in the world lose valuable jewellery and documents and aforementioned items are found in the room of the hotel security manager it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to put two and two together. I had protested my innocence and claimed a frame up, but to no avail at all. Within twelve months of being assigned security manager I was out on my ear. To make matters worse, if that was at all possible, my wages owed to me, a full six months were withheld until a meeting of the hotel board members could be arranged. Not that I expected to see a single cent of that money. The hotel manager had already promised me that he would roll over and die before I got paid and seeing as he was an almost too healthy specimen of the human race I wasn’t going to hold my breath.

In the months leading up to my arrest guests had been complaining of losing the odd earing or bracelet but seeing as the majority our, or rather now, the hotels guests could afford to purchase the hotel several times over nothing was said and the assumption was that the items had been mislaid. What offended me more was that certain newspapers had decided to look into my background and had published a detailed but highly selective biography of my 37 years on this earth. My various arrests, entanglements with the authorities and my broken marriage all served to spur the public on in calling for the book to be thrown at me. Several of the larger papers asked the question that seemed to be burning a hole in every bodies mind. Why was layabout who travelled around the world without a job, someone with several arrests and a dubious to say the least, background hired as security manager. Although I didn’t know many answers as to what was happening, I at least, know this answer. Lord Baxter. Lord Baxter was the sole owner of the hotel and the man behind the ingenious idea of a floating hotel with none of the luxuries of home.

Allow me to explain. Lord Baxter was not only a rich man who could no more count his wealth as grow hair on his head, but a close friend of my father before he died. On more than one occasion Lord Baxter, I have never discovered his first name, bailed me out of trouble and perhaps partly because of me and his attempts to put me where no harm could I do, came up with the idea of a floating hotel. To use an old disused oil rig was genius but to out fit it with the bare essentials and to charge the moon for a stay was inspirational. The one thing you cannot help but notice when you are in close quarters with the rich is that if they have to pay for a privilege then no matter how strange the privilege is they will pay, and to be able to boast a stay on the worlds only floating hotel in the gulf of Mexico was a large boast. When the original idea was, to excuse the pun, floated around various designers and builders not one single company believed it could be done. This of course to Lord Baxter was the red flag to his bull headed determination. He sourced an old out moded oil rig that the oil company was willing to let go of for a song, a pretty expensive song at that, and arranged a subsidiary of his own company to out fit it. Once the hotel was a year away from opening he attended several cocktail parties around New York and Washington. As he normally avoided these social events like the plague, that in its self attracted attention, but when he spoke about a new hotel that he was building and hinted at its uniqueness he captured the attention and also the money of the cream of society. The hotel was floated to the  position where it would be anchored a month before opening and that was when Lord Baxter came to me with a offer of a job in his wonder hotel. I jumped at the chance of course because who else would hire me at such outrageous wages. I was taken aback when I discovered that the position that he had in mind for me was the head of security. But seeing as I only found out when I was aboard the hotel it was a little late to change my mind.

In order to put the wet the appetites of potential guests Lord Baxter arranged for a select group of his acquaintances to visit the hotel a few weeks before opening. Although bookings had been made, the hotel’s first week was less than one quarter booked and that was something that Lord Baxter could not stand for. As he showed the guests around the hotel, one of them remarked on how the rooms appeared barren and unfinished and how the tawdry metal needed cleaning before the hotel opened. Lord Baxter just smiled at him and continued the tour. Later that evening at a party back on shore he again was asked why the rooms appeared not to be ready to occupancy yet. This time he answered and I would have given anything to see the look on the faces of the millionaires as they learned that the rooms were finished and ready and what they would be getting from the hotel was not the usual pampering but solitude and the distinct absence of distractions like business, telephones or even televisions. In no uncertain terms, Lord Baxter informed the attending swarm of people that they would get sun, sea, and solitude with good food. Good company would be available depending on who else was booked in at the hotel . Entertainment was left to the guests but it wouldn’t involve communicating with the outside world. Overnight the hotel was booked up for the next year and Lord Baxter, happy that he had piqued peoples interest did not attend another social party.

Perhaps because of Lord Baxter I felt the greatest grief. I still claim that I am innocent but not even Lord Baxter appears to believe me. After the trial, during which Lord Baxter had watched from the gallery, he had publically snubbed me in front of the photographers and made it crystal clear that his days of bailing me out were over. The fact that the trial ended as a mistrial and I was released was neither here or their to Lord Baxter. Nothing was proven but at the same time my name wasn’t cleared. I was out in the big wide world again with not a penny to my name and not a friend in the world. It was almost like being back at home.

Home, I reflected as I walked through the pouring rain in the french quarter of New Orleans, was where I should be now, walking the streets to find a quiet bar. From a quiet town in Kansas I had travelled perhaps more than most people could ever dream. I had skied in the Alps, photographed the great white sharks off South Africa. I had come a long way from those dusty, sun bleached days in the wheat fields of home. Perhaps I should have stayed there. Perhaps.. I didn’t get to finish that thought as a man stepped out in front of me from a side street. Apart from being considerable drier than I was the other noticeable point about him was that he seemed to be holding a cannon. To me it looked like a cannon as he held it a few inches from my eye. To a passerby it probably looked like a pistol.

“I don’t have much money”, I stammered as I became preoccupied with a large drop of water that was dangling from the end of the barrel. Guns frighten me, having seen what a bullet can do to a human body I have grown to respect guns more than most people who seem to think of them a deterrent.

“Shut it”, came the gun mans response.

A pair of hands appeared from behind me and preceded to search me, delving into my pockets and patting me down. Once my wallet was found a torch was flicked on as I saw the beam reflecting from behind me in the puddles at my feet. The gun mans focussed behind me for a brief second and refocus on me. “Why don’t you come with us and get out of this rain”, the voice behind me said in a voice not so much spoken as rumbled.

Without waiting for a response I was half pushed, half pulled into back of a dark coloured van that had been parked in the side street. This obviously explained why the gun man had only been damp rather than drenched. With the doors shut behind me the sound of the torrential rain drummed a complex rhythm on the roof of the van. When I picked my head up from the carpet on which it was resting I saw that the windows had been darkened to stop anyone from seeing in. A light was switched on and I found myself looking at a pair of mens shoes that could have been worn by a child. I moved my gaze upwards and found myself looking at a slim, pale man who couldn’t have be taller than four and a half foot. I stifled a laugh as I realised that the man was wearing a monocle in his left eye which made him look very much like a midget version of German count. He was dressed in a tailored dark suit that seemed to hang from his shoulders as if on a coat hanger. His eyes were of the clearest blue I had ever seen and he had a strange smile on his face. When he spoke his voice was deeper than I had expected, although still not like a normal voice.“Please sit up, Mister Carter, there’s a good fellow. I have a business proposition for you”.

If you can imagine the feeling in your stomach when riding one of those new fangled elevators when your stomach feels like it has stayed on the ground floor while your body is racing for the skies then you would appreciate how my stomach felt as I heard these words.

“You see”, the midget continued, “I want you to help me acquire a little property”

I didn’t need a fortune teller to predict what his next words were going to be, I knew the property he was referring to. He wanted to steal the Blue Sea Hotel, he wanted to steal the oil rig hotel.