Martin Billings Caribbean Crime Thrillers

by Ed Teja

  I looked around the room and noticed a couple of scraps of paper by the door. When I picked them up, I saw they were phone messages. When I had opened the door, they had blown around the room.

  The first was from Wilfredo and no surprise. He had learned that there was no lawyer of the name Victoria López registered in Venezuela, except for a ninety-year-old retired judge in Caracas. The cellular phone number on the card was listed with the phone company as belonging to a real estate agent in El Tigre who was on an extended vacation somewhere, and no one else answered that number.

  The second message started my heart pumping. It said simply, “We met outside Tim’s new home. I think we can help each other. Meet me at the bar near the Guardia headquarters, on Calle Bermúdez tonight at seven.”

  There was no name, but it had to be from Ramón. It could be a trick of some kind, of course. But no one had seemed to need to resort to tricks to talk to me, so unless there was another new player, I was about to make contact with Ramón again.

  I looked at my watch. It was three, which meant that I had four hours to kill. Three hours, actually, because I planned to get there early and scout the area before the meeting. I already knew the little waterfront bar he had picked, but a little reconnaissance couldn’t hurt my chances of survival. My training with the SEALs had stressed this and old habits die hard. Sometimes that can be a good thing.

  I dabbled with my tablet and pens for a while, unable to think clearly. I was too excited at the prospect of possibly getting some hard answers from one of the few people who knew anything for sure. What good was speculation when I had an interview with the answer man? My mind raced. I knew it was foolish, but I couldn’t help conjuring up every possible thing Ramón could tell me.

  On the dot of six, I walked out of the front door of the hotel lobby and turned down Calle Bermúdez toward the meeting. I had thought about calling Wilfredo, bringing him into this, but in the end, I decided that having the cops involved might complicate things. Wilfredo might have to play by some rule book that I didn’t know about. Besides, Ramón would just refuse to talk to the cops, expecting that Pancho would have him killed if he did. I was sure I believed that’s what would happen. And if he were reluctant to talk to me, I didn’t really want the police to be there while I convinced Ramón of the folly of that line of thinking.

  This meeting made me nervous. The area wasn’t well lit at night, and it wasn’t well traveled, other than by locals from the barrio. It smelled like it could easily be a set up, and I had to walk in unarmed. On the other hand, if I’d been Ramón, I wouldn’t want a more public meeting either. Too many people seemed to be looking for him, and some were serious enough about finding him to have killed María the way they did.

  It was getting dark by the time I got to the bar. I stopped in the shadows a block away and watched the street for a while. Someone was cooking pork nearby. It smelled good and reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since my early lunch with Maggie. That seemed like days ago now.

  I felt a calmness settle over me as I watched the street. Calmness and hunger are a team. I chuckled to myself. For some reason, my sense of humor always seems to kick into its highest gear in tense situations. My attitude used to really piss off some of the SEALs I worked with, who thought that earnest missions required earnest seriousness. I disagreed. I figured that my humor gave me an edge. It kept me from tightening up when things got bad.

  Still, even my best mate got irritated enough to say, “You’ll be laughing at your own fucking funeral.”

  At the time, I had made his mood even worse by taking that as a compliment.

  By a quarter to seven, it had gotten dark enough to move around easily without attracting attention. By then I was also pretty sure that the men I saw hanging around were just regulars, guys who had finished work for the day and weren’t ready to go home and play family man yet. They were standing on the sidewalk drinking beer and shooting the shit about wages and prices and girls, the way guys do in bars.

  Still, I circled around, taking back streets so that I could approach the bar from the opposite end of the street than someone would expect me to come from. If there was any serious danger, I doubted that a little precaution like that would mean much, but I didn’t have many cards to play. I had to make the ones I had count for me.

  My watch showed seven when I entered the bar. I couldn’t risk spooking Ramón by being late. A couple of guys looked over at me when I walked in, but they didn’t seem all that interested in a gringo stopping in for a beer. I sat at the bar, on a wobbly stool. The place was a dive, one of those We have Polar beer in bottles. What’ll you have? places. So, I just ordered a beer. The bartender didn’t seem to hear me. He didn’t acknowledge my order in any way, but a couple of minutes later he pulled a beer from the cooler, opened it and put it down in front of me. It wasn’t the kind of place to ask for a chilled mug, but the beer was so cold that ice clung to the neck of the bottle.

  I tucked two hundred-Bolívar notes under the ashtray in front of me and turned on my stool so I could watch the street.

  A few minutes later, Ramón came in. He spoke to a couple of guys on his way in, giving them a good evening chico sort of nod, then came to sit on the stool next to me. I pretended to ignore him. He nodded at the bartender and earned a beer for the trick.

  He raised his beer to me. “My friend,” he said in terrible English. “You are a gringo?” I nodded. Then he went on in Spanish, probably having exhausted his English vocabulary. “Are you enjoying your stay in Venezuela?”

  He managed to speak calmly, but I saw a furtive, hunted look in his eyes. His hands trembled.

  “It’s been very interesting so far,” I told him. That was a serious understatement.

  “It isn’t the best time of the year to be in Cumaná,” he said. “The days are so hot.”

  I shrugged. “It is cool enough now.”

  He motioned toward the door with his bottle. “Yes, and the streets come alive in the evening after siesta. I know this city well. Finish your beer and let me show a little of the Cumaná a tourist seldom sees.” I had to admire Ramón’s ploy. A small-time hustler playing tour guide for some dumb tourist wouldn’t arouse any suspicions, and if any of these people knew him, it was probably something he was known to do.

  “Sounds interesting,” I said. “Maybe the nightlife is more fun than the city is in daylight.”

  “Oh, I can promise that,” he said as he paid for his beer.

  The bartender smirked at us. “Make sure he meets Carmine,” he said, “if he wants to meet some of our wild night life.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ramón agreed, forcing a smile. “I will be certain that he meets Carmine. She will be the main attraction.”

  “She is not cheap, our Carmine, but she is definitely wild.”

  “I will take him to Carmine before the night is over.”

  “Take many condoms,” the bartender laughed.

  We went outside and ambled toward the pier as if we had all the time there was. Ramón said nothing and I followed his lead, walking alongside the little man and trying to extend my senses into the darkness. At the end of the street is the front gate of the Guardia base. We turned right, crossing to walk in front of a row of workshops, aluminum welding, machine shops and so on, all shuttered tight for the night, iron bars across their windows.

  In the dark, I felt Ramón move close to me. His thick little fingers clutched at my arm. “We must help each other,” he whispered in a hoarse voice.

  “You know what I need—Antonio’s killer. What do you need?”

  “I must leave the country,” he said. “If I stay, I am a dead man. The longer I am here, the greater my danger.”

  “You have money. Or drugs, which amounts to the same thing.”

  “I have nothing.” His voice, morose and husky, wobbled.

  “You stole the shipment of drugs.”

  “No matter. Now I have nothing, except fear, and a lit
tle knowledge. Help me and I will tell you what you want to know.”

  “How can I help you? If you have no money, where can you go?”

  “Your woman has a boat. If she clears out of Venezuela and I go aboard at night, then she can take me to Trinidad, and no one will know. Give me a few hundred dollars and I will go ashore there at night. I have friends there who will help me hide. It is nothing for you.”

  “She’s away on a charter for a few days,” I objected.

  “I can hide for a few more days.”

  “And if I agree, you will tell me who killed Antonio?”

  He spat. “When I leave the boat in Trinidad, I will tell the woman.” He looked around, peered into the dark like a nervous animal. “Another man used your brother to his advantage. He is the one you want.”

  “I have to talk to Maggie.” My blood pounded. I was so close to the complete truth I could smell it. Now I wanted to grab him, squeeze the information out of him. Just like they did to María and Tim.

  “Tomorrow and the next day, and one day after that, I will sit near the statue in Plaza Miranda from noon until one. You know the place?” I nodded. “You come there and tell me that it is set. After that I will have to find another way to leave, and you will have to watch your brother suffer for a murder he didn’t commit.”

  I tried to think of some argument, something I could say that would make him change his mind. I didn’t mind helping him escape. I’d done a lot worse in my time. And turning him over to the cops would probably shut his mouth forever. Still, knowing that he knew the name that could save Tim made it heart rending to let him walk away.

  “Maggie is on charter,” I said again uselessly.

  “Find her,” he said. “If you help me, I will tell you enough to clear up any mysteries about who killed Antonio.”

  “Tell me one thing. Who is this skinny gringo who killed María?”

  Even in the dark I could his eyes widen in surprise. “So, the gringo did that?”

  “So, he says.”

  “I thought…”

  “Yeah, you thought it was your ex-boss.”

  “No.”

  Suddenly I heard a muffled thunk and saw a bright flash from the shadows ahead of us. Ramón was thrown back against a wall, blood spurting from his arm. I went flat on the ground, there was no other cover. More quickly than I would have given him credit for, Ramón recovered, wedging himself into a crack between two buildings. It was a good move, for in the spot he had been standing the moment before, a brick in the wall exploded as a bullet fired from across the street splattered into it.

  Two shooters, I thought. At least two, I corrected myself, as I rolled off the sidewalk and into the street trying to move away from Ramón, to divide their targets. We couldn’t count on help from the Guardia. The silenced gun didn’t make more than a “pop”, but another bit of brick left the building.

  The first shooter fired again. From the flash, it looked like he was moving closer, real close. I heard the shuffle of his feet as he scurried forward. I suppose the lack of return fire made him brave. If he’d been a little braver, his first shot might have done what it was supposed to.

  I got on my hands and knees. I could hear the second gunman crossing the street, a bit more cautiously than his partner. As the first gunman closed, I rose up quickly and dove directly at his feet as he snapped off a wild shot at my shadow. Rolling in front of him, I came to my feet with my hands right under his arms. As I rose up, I pushed his arms up into the air and I spit in his face. His head snapped back and he toppled over backward, into the wall. He hit the wall hard but gathered himself quickly and lunged at me. The instant I sensed his movement, I dropped to my hands and knees. He tumbled over my back, his face smashing into the pavement as a shot rang over us both.

  He wasn’t moving. I looked for his gun, but it had slid off into the darkness. I didn’t have time to look for it. The only advantage I had was that, at least for the moment, the other shooter didn’t know that the gun was lost. All he’d know is that his partner was down.

  I rolled up against the wall and tried to spot the shooter. I was sure he’d moved since his last shot, and I’d been too busy to get a fix on him then, anyway. He moved better than his partner. If he was well trained, I was still in deep trouble.

  Animals know instinctively that it is harder to spot them when they are standing still than if they are moving. It’s only people that have lost that instinct. Tucked up against that wall, in the pale moonlight, I felt as conspicuous as David Niven would have been at Woodstock, and years of training argued with a body that screamed to run for some kind of cover. The fact that he wasn’t shooting was the only positive argument that not moving was the right thing to do.

  Suddenly I saw movement off to my right, where several cars were parked. I turned my head to look, and a bullet hit the wall where my cheek had been. I dropped to the ground and rolled away as I heard another bullet hiss through the air. But now the muzzle flashes came from a different direction, away from the cars.

  Still, I was certain someone new, someone who hadn’t been with the two shooters, was crouching between the cars. My only escape was to roll toward the cars to get distance between the shooter and me. If the mystery person was one of them, they had me boxed in and I was probably as good as dead.

  The person shooting at me was pursuing. This time he made some noise, kicking gravel as he ran. He must have finally realized that I had no gun. If I’d had one, I would have returned fire. He fired again and I heard the thwack of the bullet hitting a car. An instant later, the hidden person fired. There was no silencer on this gun, and the blast made my ears ring. I lay still, waiting for the bullet that didn’t hit near me. Instead, the person scampered toward me in a crouch. It was a woman, and her shadowy presence came with a waft of a delicate perfume. She held her gun in both hands and pointed it back toward the shooter. I looked up.

  It was Victoria López.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Yeah.” I got up and followed her over to where the shooter lay on his back in the street, wearing a surprised look and an extra hole in his head.

  Victoria checked the other one. “He’s alive, he just has a flat face,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. We will have official company very soon and that might be inconvenient.”

  I followed, noting that Ramón was nowhere in sight. I peeked into his hiding spot. Only a small puddle of blood showed he had ever been there. He’d clearly made good his escape.

  Victoria led me a couple of blocks to where she had a car, a black Toyota, some fancy pseudo sports car. We got in and she started it, driving the first few blocks slowly and with no lights. When she got to a part of town where there was more traffic, she turned on the lights and drove at a more reasonable speed.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To your hotel. We need to talk.”

  I was glad she finally wanted to talk. “Tell me, can all Venezuelan women shoot like that?”

  I could see a trembling smile in the glow of the instrument lights. “I was born in Chile,” she said as if that explained things.

  “Are Chileans all expert marksmen?”

  “My family was very poor. We could not afford to waste bullets.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  “What was that scuffle all about?” she asked.

  “Oh, those guys got upset because their baseball team lost the big game and they knew I’d bet on the team from Puerto La Cruz.”

  She smiled again. “And who did Ramón bet on? Or is he your bookie?”

  “Whoa! I see that lawyers are a lot better informed in this country than in most places. I mean I can understand why a lawyer would need to be a good shot and carry a gun, because everybody hates lawyers.”

  “My law school required classes in unarmed combat as well,” she said. “We are expected to be versatile in physical defense as well as offering courtroom defenses of diabolical cle
verness.”

  “But lawyers are usually pretty uninformed people, in terms of street information.”

  She shrugged. I noticed she was shaking slightly. “Perhaps I am an exceptional lawyer. But I don’t think those men were sent to kill you,” she said. “They were thugs, not gunmen. They were there to grab Ramón, not kill anyone.”

  “I guessed that. Some of their shooting was pretty bad for such close range.”

  “I imagine they planned to take Ramón alive, but panicked when they saw he was talking to you. They couldn’t afford for you to pump him.”

  “But they did shoot him,” I pointed out.

  “I know. At that point I think they were intending to shoot you and missed. That’s how it looked to me.”

  I looked at her. “You did have good seats for this performance.”

  “Season’s tickets,” she said. “And partly I am guessing.”

  “So, they risked such a long shot to close my ears to what Ramón had to say, then they panicked again because they thought they might have killed Ramón?”

  “The man who fired first is new at his job.” She sounded sympathetic. “If the other man, Rafael, had been able to, he’d have stopped him, preferring to move in close, so that he could capture Ramón and kill you.”

  “Saved by impulsive youth.”

  “Something like that. This is what I know. And see, you complained that I don’t share information,” she reminded me. “So, what did Ramón say?”

  “He wants to get out of the country,” I said, seeing no reason not to tell her. “He will trade the name of Antonio’s killer for help doing that. By the way, he says that the killer is not Tim.”

  She said nothing to that, and we parked the car in a parking garage and walked to the hotel. The streets were alive with sidewalk vendors hawking all sorts of junk made in China, flashlights, key rings, bottle openers, toys, padlocks, shoe polish, batteries, and endless varieties of cheap clothing. I got my key at the reception desk. There were no new messages for me, and I was glad of that. I’d had enough messages for one day.