Martin Billings Caribbean Crime Thrillers

by Ed Teja

  “What makes you think I have it?”

  “Process of elimination, something you know that I’m quite good at. You see, when Ramón went freelance, he took it from his corporate sponsors, but then it, and he, in a mysterious cloud of smoke, disappeared. I know his people didn’t get it back because they would have offered to sell it to me. They want the money it represents, not the stuff. There aren’t any other players, so, Ramón either gave it to your brother, or your brother stole it from him. Doesn’t matter which. And I can’t believe that little Timmy would die keeping the secret to himself, when he could simply tell you and achieve salvation. Voila! You are the magic number, the dude with the shit I want.”

  “Trading being what it is, I waited until I could be sure to have something you wanted as much as I want those drugs. Not that I understand why anyone would trade all that lovely coke for one woman. I suppose they might be feeling guilty about causing her to go through the same games that Tim’s bitch did. And I wouldn’t kill this one so fast, you know. I’m on my own turf now and have lots of time to enjoy playing with her for a lot longer. I bet she can be taught some tricks. I bet she’d learn to beg to perform for me. Can you imagine that, dear? She is shaking her head, but I think different. You know I almost thought you didn’t know where the stuff was, but then when the Cumaná boys came after you that put a lid on it.” He laughed. “I heard you handed them their asses, though. I had a good laugh over that.”

  “What if I don’t know where the drugs are?”

  “Then you better tell me right now which parts of the lady you’ll like best, and I’ll mail them to you as a souvenir of your Venezuelan vacation.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s a wise sailor dude.”

  “What happens next?”

  “What you do is get a hold of that little up market Venezuelan chica you been banging, the one my guys saw you with, because you are going to need her help.”

  “For what?” My hands were sweaty, the phone felt slippery, and I was afraid I was going to drop it.

  “I don’t trust you John Wayne types not to try something fancy, and I don’t want to be inconvenienced, so here is how it goes down. You will get the drugs from wherever they are. Put them in a red suitcase. A bright red suitcase. One of those cheap-assed plastic, fake leather things they sell all over the place in this dump. You will also get your hands on a small boat, then you will ferry the chica and suitcases to me and I will accept delivery from her.”

  “Where?” I decided it was a good thing that he didn’t appear to know the whole story about the shootout with the bad guys or he’d worry more about Victoria than me. As it was, it seemed that a bit of tunnel vision due to chauvinism was about all we had going for us.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow at this time. Be at the phone. And have the chica there. I don’t like to be kept waiting and I’ll want to talk to her, just ’cause you have an ugly voice.”

  “I have some shit to do before we transact our little business, a bit of tidying up. I assume you do, too, as I doubt you are stupid enough to keep the stuff under the bed in your hotel. By the way, do I have to spell out what happens if the cops get wind of this?”

  “When you call tomorrow, I want to talk to Maggie again.”

  “Hey, this isn’t a phone sex line, you know.”

  “You’ll let me talk to her, because if she isn’t perfectly healthy, you don’t get what you want, you’ve got nothing to bargain with.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know about that. I bet if I played around with her a little, had a bit of what you’ve been getting, maybe even messed her up a little, you’d still be willing to swap what I want for her warm and undead body.”

  “You might not want to risk that with us John Wayne types. Finding out how we feel about damaged merchandise might be hazardous to your health.”

  “Okay, hero, so you get off over the phone with your honey tomorrow.” He hung up. I collapsed on the bed, shaking and exhausted.

  By the time I explained the situation to Bill, his look had turned murderous. His hands were white knuckled from gripping the arms of the chair, and I hoped it was better made than it looked.

  “I’ll peel his skin off with a dull razor,” he said. “Real slow. Then I’ll gouge out his eyes and feed them to him. Then, if I’m still mad, I’ll hurt him. And that’s if he returns Maggie unharmed.”

  “First we have to get Maggie back.”

  He slumped. “Yeah, there is that.”

  We sat in silence for a while, both scrambling our brains for mad schemes that would miraculously free Maggie, let us capture Highball, find out where the drugs were cached, learn who killed Antonio and get a confession. A full day’s work for your average superhero, that.

  We had learned some new information. Now I knew for certain that Highball didn’t have the drugs and could agree with him that Pancho wouldn’t hide the fact if he had gotten them back. But that made the situation more confused than ever. As Highball pointed out, almost everyone was accounted for. Except...

  “What about this Victoria?” Bill asked suddenly. It made my stomach knot up. “You said she had some business today. Could that include moving some dope around?”

  “She saved my life,” I pointed out.

  “Which kept you center stage in the game of dope, dope, who’s got the dope. If I were a marginal player, one who lucked out and found the package that everyone was looking for, I’d do everything I could to keep you alive and with high profile too. I’d want them paying attention to you while I figure out what to do. You are a perfect person to take the heat.”

  It was a point. A nasty, vile, I-don’t-want-to-hear-it point that made a lot of sense, not that we hadn’t managed to believe at least three contradictory things every day since I’d started this mess. But again, the puzzle still had missing pieces. Someone was responsible for killing Antonio. I figured that that someone was the one who stole the stolen drugs. But Antonio wouldn’t confuse Victoria with Tim, even if he could manage to confuse some other man with him. And if Victoria had the drugs, she had to have gotten them from Ramón, one way or another, but she had no reason to kill Antonio.

  “Damn if I know,” I told him.

  “Well, this Highball wants to talk tomorrow, so she is in on the game for now. We have to work with her. You’d better call her and make sure she shows up.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The card she gave was someone else’s. The phone number wasn’t hers. She used it for a few days, but if she has a phone number it isn’t one that I’ve got.”

  “Junior, this gets more hopeless all the time.”

  I smiled. “She said she’d call tonight.”

  “You think she will?”

  “I have to. It’s hard on the ego to think that you might be led down the wrong path by a sexy body and managed to ignore what’s right in front of you, so I need to believe her.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first to be conned,” he said. “And it sounds like she is very good at what she does.”

  “True.”

  “So, let’s do our best to put everything in some kind of perspective. You are no detective. You are a sailor who is trying to figure out some weird criminal behavior because the pros won’t touch it. You are trying to help your brother and doing the best you can.”

  “Which so far has gotten María raped and murdered and Maggie taken prisoner in ransom for drugs I don’t have.”

  He made a face. “You aren’t going to go and get all guilty on me, are you? We got work to do, mate. We’ll do a post-mortem later. When Maggie is home safe, we can all sit around and talk about who should’ve done what to whom and when. I bet we can find us somebody to blame. But it’s a bit early for that now.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Bill insisted that we go down to the lobby and get a couple of drinks to ease the pain. We stopped at the desk and pointed out that w
e would be in the lobby and told them to let us know if we had any calls. “Especially from women,” Bill said.

  The clerk managed to wink and grin at the same time. “Oh, si, Señor.”

  I decided to give Chris one more chance at being human. I figured that he would be willing to let us use the launch, as it wasn’t for Tim or me, but for Maggie. The only good thing I knew about him was that he seemed to care about Maggie. The number rang, but I got an answering…well they aren’t even machines anymore, but some lousy voice mail system. I left a message that must have sounded just as stupid as I felt trying to tell a machine that it was important for Chris to call me as soon as he could.

  Finally, we got to the lobby where Bill picked up two whiskies in tall glasses. “Whiskey and water?” I asked.

  He looked shocked. “Whiskey and water sharing a glass? In my hand? Never! I have heard of it done but will not condone it. No, mate, these are triples. These little sips, I maintain, are the minimum dosage for our pain.”

  “That’s going to do us in, and in a big way, I’d say.”

  “The way I see things,” Bill said, settling down into a comfortable chair that groaned only slightly under his weight, “we have nothing to do except wait to be called. We wait for Victoria López, Chris, Highball, Tim’s doctors, Wilfredo, the Holy Host of Archangels, and anyone else who at this moment thinks we are the major suppliers of dope to the western world. According to all that is nautical, the only appropriate and responsible action for two sailors ashore in such a situation is to engage in excessive food and drink.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “It’s enshrined in the International Maritime Regulations, Junior. Look it up. Besides, we are in no condition for anything as foolish and useless as trying to think through the facts, of which we have few and trust almost none. So, take it from the healing voice of Ugly Bill, beamed to you across the face of this planet on the ethereal radio that we are going to have a nice dinner or two and get drunk.”

  And that’s what we did. I can report with satisfaction that we did it without starting any fights or creating a major embarrassment for the hotel staff. In fact, for a couple of sailors, we were downright gentlemen.

  I woke fuzzy headed when Victoria called a little after midnight. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner,” she said. “I just got in from Puerto La Cruz. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Just sleep.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone. Puerto La Cruz?”

  “Actually, I spent the day, most of it, in Caracas. I…”

  “Highball grabbed Maggie,” I said, cutting in. “He wants you to be the one who swaps the drugs for her.”

  She didn’t say anything at first. Then, “I’m sad,” she said, “but not surprised. Far too often that’s how the final hands of this sort of thing get played out.”

  “You do seem to know a lot about it.”

  She sighed. “Si. It’s my bad fortune. I know far too much.”

  “Well, you are supposed to be here when Highball calls tomorrow. Make that today. It’s after midnight now.”

  “I’ll be there, but not until noon.”

  “What is going on?”

  She paused before answering. “I am truly sorry, my love, but I can’t tell you anything more until I see you tomorrow.”

  “Victoria, this is no time to be coy and mysterious. We are supposed to trade drugs we don’t have for a girl he does have, and I don’t know what the hell is going on. We have to have you on our side, and I don’t even know who you are yet.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll see you at noon.” Then she hung up.

  At least she had called, I thought. She hadn’t taken off for high ground, and didn’t sound like she intended to, either. I felt pretty good when I called Ugly Bill and told him. I didn’t feel nearly so good when he reminded me that if she was so inclined, she had also just given herself twelve more hours to get herself and her drugs far, far away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I awoke with my head throbbing from too much booze and too little sleep. I looked at the clock. It was only five, but I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. I was in no hurry to return to the agonizing dreams I’d been having. Getting up and facing the day held more promise.

  I staggered into the bathroom and straight into the shower. The hotel had no hot water that morning, and the shock of cold water stabbed at my skin like thousands of needles. After a few minutes I began to wake up, and the cold water felt good. My pulse raced and the world began to coalesce into something rational. I stood under the shower letting the icy water pound on the top of my head and run down my face in great streams. As long as I didn’t try to think, I began feeling something close to good.

  It was too early to do anything in Cumaná. The restaurants don’t open until late in the morning. So, I dressed and went for a walk. City streets are always more interesting to me when they are empty. Then I can see the place itself, clear of the context of the people who use and abuse it. This early I felt a delightful coolness and the air was as yet unpolluted by fumes from cars and trucks.

  I strolled the empty sidewalks with no direction or purpose. After a few minutes I found myself in the park in El Centro. Without thinking, I walked straight to the bench where Ramón had wanted to rendezvous. I sat on it, wondering what had happened to the poor little man.

  I didn’t care for him at all and blamed him for at least part of Tim’s troubles. He had gotten us into this mess—first Tim, and then me, and now Maggie. But I wished Ramón no worse troubles than he already had. His life had not been charmed, and he had a number of people dogging after him who panted after the chance to make it a lot more miserable. I realized that I wanted to find him, to learn if he was still alive. Highball might have caught him as he had Maggie. Perhaps that was how he was so sure that the drugs had been taken from him. If that were the case, Ramón was already dead.

  There were a few people in the park, and most of them kids, many from the nearby college. They formed part of the scene; they didn’t disturb it. As the sun lit up the sky, the city started to wake. A few merchants began to raise the metal shutters from their doors in preparation for doing business, city workers, in orange coveralls, came to sweep the sidewalks and water the grass in the park. I had to accept that the day was now starting in earnest and was glad I had taken that little piece of the morning for myself.

  Still stalling, I got up from the bench and took the long way back to the hotel. By the time I got there, the restaurant was open, and Bill was already at the table.

  “You look like shit,” he said, his voice cheery and without pausing from shoveling food into his face. “And don’t bother telling me that I do, too. I always look like shit, hence the nickname Ugly. But you are supposed to be the glamour boy of the team, and you’re letting the side down.”

  I didn’t rise to the bait. I sat down. The waiter came over and I ordered a large breakfast with bacon and eggs and a pot of hot, black coffee. A pot of coffee is a concept not well understood in a country where they normally serve coffee in cups the size of eyewash cups. And if you don’t like the coffee sweet, and I mean really sweet, sweet enough to rot your teeth while you wait, you have to make sure they know it. But we had the same waiter every morning, and he was getting used to our strange ways. He just smiled.

  “You are feeling sassy this morning,” I said to Bill.

  His broad smile spread out his egg-filled beard. “Last night I was feeling bad. I felt bad for Maggie, bad for you, bad for Tim, bad for myself. That is a crappy and unproductive way to be. But my brilliant therapy of excessive libation and food has me well around the corner. Now I am beyond the pitying and self-pitying phase. I am ready to kick ass. I love a good fight.”

  “Right.” My coffee came, and I started the rebuilding of my failing metabolism. “Of course, we won’t know anything about what we can do and where we will do it, until this afternoon. We don’t
know the rules of engagement or the playing field.”

  “Don’t look at the dark side, Luke. The fight has already begun, and we know enough to begin our preparations. This mission is ramping up, Junior. Didn’t they teach you goddamn SEALs nothing with all those taxpayer dollars of mine?”

  “You’ve never paid taxes in your life.”

  He waved his fork in the air dismissively, and I watched to see if the pile of pancake would fall off. It didn’t. The man was a master. “That is slanderous and completely beside the point,” he said. “Those of us with proper training in accounting and warfare know that the one who prepares the best has the best chance of winning and that ninety nine percent of preparation is here!” He pointed at his head with the now empty fork. “Since I have one of the larger heads on this planet, I need plenty of preparation time. I also, however, can accommodate plenty of ideas. Room enough for all sorts of contradictory plans.” He smiled a devilish grin. “Now you might think that I am being frivolous or flippant, but I assure you I am accepting our situation, or more precisely Tim and Maggie’s situation, with maximum seriousity.”

  “That’s good. But I don’t see a thing useful we can do.”

  “That’s because you're not looking correctly. Later, I will correct that.”

  After breakfast we walked down to the waterfront to check on Harm. Everything was shipshape. We had brought Sammy a couple of six packs of beer and some arepas. We also brought some groceries so he could cook for himself in the galley. Harm had a fantastic galley and Sammy was a good cook, if you like curry or roti.

  Checking on Harm was routine—a comforting bit of routine. She wasn’t the kind of target that pirates like: too old, too small, and too slow to be a good smuggler. Sammy stayed on board to prevent crimes ‘of opportunity’ as the police everywhere call them.