by Fred Galvin
Montego Bay
A novel by
Fred Galvin
2020
For PJ...
Paradise is where we are
Introduction
Montego Bay is the sequel to The Seventh Wave
Dan Deckler was officially almost-semi-retired from the New York Police Department. His long career as a homicide detective had come to a close shortly after his beloved wife Jen was prematurely taken from him just as they had decided they would be retiring. He then occupied his time with his own private investigation firm and eventually as a consultant back with the NYPD’s Seventh Precinct on Manhattan’s lower east side.
After he and his long time detective partner, Ronika “Ronnie” Deveaux, concluded their investigation of a case involving the body of a washed up (literally) mob bookie named Fast Frankie Finacci, Ronnie suddenly, and unexpectedly, decided it was time for her to leave the NYPD. She returned home to the Caribbean to work with her brother in his charter fishing and excursions company.
Bored with consulting and PI work in Manhattan, and fighting loneliness, Dan booked an excursion with Deveaux Charter Services out of Montego Bay, Jamaica which included a happy reunion with Ronnie. His planned five day vacation turned into a more lengthy stay during which he became “experienced” in deep sea fishing, learned about Jamaican legends and lore, unwittingly became involved in an investigation that had personal ramifications, and found love again.
~~~
“Montego Bay”
Bobby Bloom
Vernon'll meet me when the BOAC lands
Keys to the M. G. will be in his hands
Adjust to the driving 'n' I'm on my way
It's all on the right side in Montego Bay
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Come sing me la! Come sing me Montego Bay
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
'N' Gillian'll meet me like a brother would
I think I remember but it's twice as good
Like how cool the rum is from his silver tray
I thirst to be thirsty in Montego Bay
Come sing me La
Come sing me Montego Bay
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
I'll lay on a lilo ‘till I'm lobster red
I still feel the motion here at home in bed
I tell you it's hard for me to stay away
You ain’t been 'till you been high in Montego Bay
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Come sing me La
Come sing me Montego Bay
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Dance in the streets
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Foreword
Chapter 1: A nod and a wink
Chapter 2: Deveaux Charter Services for Mr. Justin Case
Chapter 3: Katie The Picker
Chapter 4: Duppies, Rolling Calves, and Ol’ Hige
Chapter 5: Elephant-In-The-Jeep
Chapter 6: “Hello Mama.”
Chapter 7: Guns, Gun Bay Beach, T-Bone, and the Whyte Brothers
Chapter 8: Delyse
Chapter 9: Urinal Protocol
Chapter 10: The Flip Flop Lounge
Chapter 11: “… a six-figger sum.”
Chapter 12: Skipjack and Rick’s Café
Chapter 13: Louis Satterfield
Chapter 14: “It will be much safer that way, for now.”
Chapter 15: “He’s our best bet. We have no other options.”
Chapter 16: “Marlin? Barracudas? Me?”
Chapter 17: Seagrape Terrace
Chapter 18: “Malcolm? Is that you?”
Chapter 19: “Then yesterday and last night happened.”
Chapter 20: “… this time you will cooperate.”
Chapter 21: Cop mode
Chapter 22: Fifty-fifty
Chapter 23: “The last man who threatened my sister …”
Chapter 24: The Banana Boat Song
Chapter 25: “… you wanted some detective training?”
Chapter 26: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Chapter 27: Skype call
Chapter 28: Things are going to start happening!
Chapter 29: Caribbean Carry-Out
Chapter 30: “Nice hat!”
Chapter 31: Quid pro quo
Chapter 32: Karma
Chapter 33: Rio Bueno
Chapter 34: “ … he can’t swim.”
Chapter 35: All we could do was wait
Chapter 36: “And I don’t mean Columbus Circle …”
Chapter 37: Runaway Bay
Chapter 38: Eggs-Over-Easy
Chapter 39: “Until I didn’t. Forgive me?”
Chapter 40: “Welcome to Jamaica, mon.”
Chapter 41: Decompression at The Flip Flop Lounge
Chapter 42: Katie The Picker - Act II
Afterword
About the author and the cover artist
Foreword
Imagine you are fortunate enough to have a decent story you think you can put into book form. You most likely have at least a rudimentary idea as to its structure, that is, significant plot lines, characters, settings, and perhaps a backstory or two sprinkled in. Certainly you have an idea as to how it all comes together and ends, or maybe a choice of multiple endings with a “Hitchcockian” twist or two added just to keep your readers off balance.
However, I'm willing to bet that there is one significant aspect that you may not have thought through, at least until you sit down with your fingers poised and hovering over the keyboard. That’s when you will discover that one of your initial challenges will be … how do I begin?
Well, there are several options. There have been some pretty famous opening lines, to wit:
Of course there's “Once upon a time...” but, seriously, who starts a book with that anymore? I guess that would still fly for some types of kids' stories but nothing of a serious nature, especially a work of fiction with some drama and action.
Then there’s “Call me Ishmael,” Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
Charles Dickens famously began his classic A Tale of Two Cities with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom …”
Lesser known outside of serious literary circles was, “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” by Vladimir Nabokov to kick off Lolita. This one may not exactly be a classic opener, but I just had to throw it in the mix.
Who can forget the start of George Lucas’s Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope? “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away …” followed by the scroll away to infinity:
It was a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won their
first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
It has also occurred to me that I would be seriously remiss if I didn’t mention the opener from the biggest best seller of all time, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” I imagine you know the rest of that one. Personally, I think it should have read, “In the beginning there was a Big Bang.” But that would probably get me into trouble. Also, when I dare to think about such things, like, where did the Big Bang come from, and exactly how did it Bang anyway? I mean, there was absolutely nothing and then, BANG! and in a millionth of a second there was everything. What? I’m confused on a variety of levels, as always. Regardless, that’s a discussion for another time.
And finally of course, “It was a dark and stormy night.” – The Seventh Wave, Fred Galvin as Dan Deckler, plagiarism in its most blatant form.
What? Fred who? Dan Who?
Dan Deckler, that’s me,
and if you're reading this, you have most likely read The Seventh Wave, my account of how a corpse, that literally washed up at my feet on a Long Island beach, led me and my former NYPD Homicide partner, Detective Ronika (Ronnie) Deveaux, on a rather interesting and twisted journey into the dark world of New York City’s mob bookie business.
I started that tale with one of the greatest openers of all time followed immediately by the disclaimer acknowledging that it was indeed not a Deckler original and, in my defense, it truly was “a dark and stormy night.”
Chapter 1: A nod and a wink
So, given the above, I guess you could say this tale has already begun with a discussion of beginnings. As you will see, what follows is actually a continuation of where The Seventh Wave left off, namely with a certain Mr. Justin Case having booked a five-day sea excursion charter with Deveaux Charter Services on the Sea Nymph out of Montego Bay, Jamaica. He would be arriving at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay in one week.
You may recall that Ronnie and I had been partners for many years in the Homicide Division of NYPD’s Seventh Precinct on Manhattan’s lower east side. As a team we had a reputation for closing difficult cases. We worked very well together. I managed to play out hunches based on decades of investigatory experience and Ronnie had an uncanny knack of cutting through the chaff and formulating plans for working the evidence we gathered to inevitably lead us to the closing of our cases. As always, the plans were living, breathing, animals which required constant attention and flexibility. Ronnie always seemed to be able to roll with the punches and change directions as required. As a team, we both intuitively knew when a particular course of action wasn’t working.
The mystical “Justin Case” was Ronnie’s way of personifying whatever backup contingency plan she may have devised “just in case” the current plan we had in motion fell on its ass or, at a minimum, got bogged down in traffic. It was her “Justin Case Plan.”
As an example, I specifically remember tailing a suspect on foot when he turned onto a narrow street with very little foot traffic. I said into my radio to Ronnie that, with so few pedestrians he could easily make me. Her reply was typical. “Don’t worry, Dan. If he notices you’ve been following him, just disengage and Justin will pick him up on the next block and he’ll never catch on.” In such a situation, “Justin” was either Ronnie herself or a uniformed officer she had posted in a strategic spot, “just in case.”
~~~
Spoiler Alert Coming!
If you have not yet read The Seventh Wave, I recommend you stop here and do so. It will serve as good context for what follows. Shameless plug.
~~~
Okay, onward.
Following the heart-breaking and way-too-soon passing of my dear wife Jen, I had retired from the NYPD and did some PI work on my own, Double-D Investigations (I know, originality is not my strong suit). I worked individual cases of my choosing and had even returned to the Seventh as a professional consultant. My former NYPD Captain, Billy Smart, had “asked” me to come back on board to help work the case of the beached corpse to which I had alluded earlier. I accepted primarily because I was totally bored with PI work and it gave me the opportunity to work again with Ronnie. The corpse turned out to be a mob bookie named Fast Frankie Finacci. Ronnie and I had a history with Fast Frankie and Billy had handed her the case.
The rest of this tale is what happened after we figured out the series of events that lead to Fast Frankie’s bloated body being pushed toward Long Island’s south shore barrier islands by the swells generated as Tropical Storm Anne journeyed up the east coast. The seventh wave of a set of waves had finally rolled him ashore mere yards from where I was sitting on a dune watching some kids surf the same waves I surfed decades earlier.
As it turned out, Tropical Storm Anne was merely Ronnie’s unwitting accomplice to Fast Frankie’s date with the denizens of the Atlantic and finally with the beach at Garbage Cove.
Ronnie and I had tracked Finacci’s activities as he ran his bookie operation for the Mariucci crime family on Manhattan’s lower east side. He was a suspect in the murder of Ronnie’s closest confidential informant, Louie Calzone. At the very least, Frankie was a strong suspect in my eyes but Ronnie was absolutely convinced he had wielded the baseball bat that had crushed Louie’s head. It was his way of sending a message to any of his clients who did not square up their losses in a time frame satisfactory to Frankie’s liking. Unfortunately, we had zero evidence that we could use to hang the murder on Finacci. There were no witnesses, no physical evidence, and the mobsters provided alibis for one another. So we were forced to kick him loose, much to Ronnie’s consternation.
Unknown to me was one compelling factor fueling Ronnie’s intense rage and frustration in not nailing Finacci for Louie’s killing. That factor was her own guilt. Not only was Louie Calzone one of Ronnie’s closest and most trusted CIs, he was also serving as her proxy for bets with Fast Frankie. You see, Ronnie had a serious gambling problem. Very serious. I had absolutely no idea that she had the addiction and had been using Louie Calzone to place bets with the mob bookie.
Understandably, if Finacci learned he was taking bets from an NYPD detective, even indirectly, well, that would have been very bad news for Ronnie. He would have serious leverage on her and would certainly not hesitate to use it. As with most bookie clients, she lost much more than she won and was unable to pay Finacci enough, often enough, again through Louie, to keep the wolf from the door. Her losses plus Frankie’s vig were just too great and they piled up.
So, when she learned of Louie’s death, Ronnie knew immediately it was Finacci. Her guilt was overwhelming, especially since Louie had kept her secret and never ratted her out to Fast Frankie, even knowing his own life was in jeopardy.
Ronnie’s position quickly became untenable. I had expressed mild dismay over her intense obsession with hanging Louie’s murder on Finacci. Sure, I understood how frustrating it was to have a suspect we were sure had committed the crime but no compelling evidence that we could use to charge and hold him. She could not tell me all the details, feeling she needed to protect me from being put into a very difficult position. So she eventually took an opportunity to stake out Finacci on her own time hoping to find something she could use to nail him.
Long story short, Finacci was involved in a rather gruesome incident inside the mob’s club which she was staking out and her stakeout resulted in her getting him into her car. She held onto him ferociously, eventually drugging him and whisking him out onto the ocean on her brother Roje’s boat. Her hope was to isolate and intimidate him using her new-found leverage on him to force a confession. The situation went sideways off Long Island’s south shore when Finacci attacked Ronnie, threatening her with her own gun, and Roje was forced to defend her. Frankie came out on the losing end, ironically as a result of a blow to the head by Roje, much the same as he had dealt to Louie Calzone. Roje and Ronnie didn’t have many options so over the side he went.
Tropical Storm Anne, and finally one of her seventh waves, took care of the rest and there he was, washed up on the shore of Garbage Cove at my feet. Eventually, the body was ID’d as Fast Frankie Finacci, a known Manhattan mobster. So the case was kicked from the New York State Police to Captain Smart at the Seventh and he handed it to Ronnie and me because of our experience with him. You can imagine the pressure this put on Ronnie. She was tasked with solving the homicide of a mob bookie who was actually her bookie. Additionally, her brother had been responsible for the death with her as an accomplice. Sure, it was self-defense, but still, how could she logically, objectively, and emotionally deal with it? She soon was cornered to the point that she had to make a decision. Her two possible courses of action were to come clean and turn herself in or stay mum and vacate the premises.
She chose door number two. She decided her only course of action was to resign from the NYPD for “compelling personal reasons” (technically the truth) and accompany Roje on his journey home to Jamaica on his cha
rter boat the Sea Nymph. She felt that was the best way to protect both herself, her brother, and me.
She wrote me a long personal letter explaining the entire situation detailing what she had done and how she had arrived at her decision. She essentially left the choice up to me as to what I should do and how to handle Captain Smart.
I understood the emotions tugging my partner in so many directions. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind.
Nothing. I’d do nothing.
To his credit, Billy Smart suspected something much deeper than Ronnie’s stated motives for resigning, namely to go “home” and spend time with her brother and mother, where ever “home” was. She had always been a bit enigmatic when it came to her personal details. I was sure Billy also suspected I knew more than I was telling. But he didn’t push me, respecting my long-term close professional relationship with Ronnie. I’m sure he also weighed the value of pursuing the demise of a mob sleaze like Finacci versus just letting it go and dealing with more pressing cases.
So basically with a nod and a wink, he let the case go cold.
Chapter 2: Deveaux Charter Services for Mr. Justin Case
During the course of the investigation into Finacci’s death, I had accessed surveillance video which had shown Ronnie on her stakeout of the Delancey Social Club, a known Mariucci Family mob hangout. The surveillance showed some unusual goings-on and, finally, Finacci emerging in a rather agitated state. Ronnie had pulled her car up to the club’s entrance and somehow convinced Frankie to get in.
I had pieced together other surveillance videos to determine that, puzzlingly, she had driven him to the EATS 24-7 Diner and from there to the docks in Brooklyn where the surveillance ended.
I had to admit it all was a head-scratcher for me until I read her letter which spelled out exactly what happened. Ronnie’s parting letter to me was very detailed and, I am slightly embarrassed to admit, it moved me to tears.
