This article: Xavier Quinn is the chief of police on a small Caribbean island. When Donald Pater, the millionaire owner of a luxury resort hotel, is found murdered, everyone assumes that the culprit is Maubee, a petty crook who also is Quinn's best friend.  Quinn doesn't believe it and clashes with the island's inept Governor Chalk and his arrogant political fixer Thomas Elgin.  Quinn's worries over the murder exacerbate his troubles at home; he is estranged from his wife, Lola, and rarely has time to see his son.
Maubee eludes the police at every turn. Quinn questions a witness, who says that Maubee had a (rare) US$10,000 bill. Trying to track down Maubee, Quinn questions Ubu Pearl, the local witch and aunt of Maubee's girlfriend, Isola. 
Chalk introduces Quinn to Fred Miller, an affable American said to represent Pater's company.
Pater had been found floating in a hot tub, decapitated.  Against Chalk's instructions, Quinn has the body autopsied and finds that Pater died of a venomous snake bite and was already dead when his head was cut off.  Quinn arrests Jose Patina, who claims to be on vacation, but has also been questioning people about Maubee's whereabouts. 
After Patina is bailed out of jail, he confers with Miller in a seedy hotel.  Miller tells him the "operation" is over, then kills Patina.  Miller goes to Ubu Pearl and demands that to know where Maubee is.  When she refuses, he burns down her house, with her inside.
Quinn discovers that Pater, a close associate of the President of the United States, brought stacks of $10,000 bills to the island to be picked up by Patina. The President wants to fund an anti-Communist revolution in Latin America, but Congress would not support this. The President acts illegally, using the C.I.A. to deliver discontinued currency that is still good but will not be missed from its storage at the US Department of the Treasury.  The murder messed up the plan, so the C.I.A. has sent Miller to retrieve the money and "plug up the holes." contains an answer for the question: What political office does the person who  introduces Quinn to Fred Miller hold?, what is it ?


Governor