by Ed Teja
“You know we need to let him talk to the cops if we are going to get Tim out of jail.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “Damn it, I know that, Martin! Now let’s get down this hill before the asshole figures out something is wrong.”
We walked noisily down the hill the way we would if we had no reason not to be seen. I didn’t have time to play games like putting on the guard’s clothing, so I had to gamble that the attention would be on Maggie and any interest in me would end at the tip of my gun barrel, that their assumptions would cloud their vision. Sometimes it works and sometimes...but we don’t dwell on the negative.
When we got to the bottom, I saw Highball had given his Uzi to the man who had been on the beach before and he now strode out toward the water waving a pistol. Chris had the launch jilling about a little offshore, and Victoria, with the suitcase, stood in the bow. Highball took a quick look over his shoulder when he heard us arrive and then waved his gun barrel back at us.
“Okay, miss, you asked for it. Here she is. Miss America. A little fanfare, please.”
Victoria’s voice was faint. “I can’t see her,” she said.
“Coño!” Highball grumbled. “Push her out here on the beach in front of me where she can bask in the moonlight.”
I pushed Maggie in her back with the barrel of the rifle and she staggered forward until she was standing beside Highball. He grabbed her by the arm and pushed her in front of him. “See? A live woman. Both arms, both legs, head, even the tits are still attached. They don’t come any more alive than that.”
“Okay,” Victoria said.
The gunman with the Uzi passed close by me as he headed for the cover of a large rock. I considered taking him out, but with a sniper somewhere training his rifle on the boat and an armed Highball loose I didn’t dare. I needed a better opportunity.
The gunman operated the bolt on the Uzi and chuckled at me in the dark. “Keep out of the line of fire, amigo.”
I grunted in a way that I hoped would be meaningful to him and was thankful that we were in the shadows of the large rocks that flanked the beach. Highball, meanwhile, had climbed up on a rock on the other side. Both men were well above us now. I was glad they hadn’t been there when I had come swimming in.
In the boat, Victoria turned and said something to Chris that I didn’t catch. He nodded, his movements stiff. He looked very unhappy, but he eased the boat forward until its keel nuzzled the sand of the beach, and kept the throttle constant while Victoria, still holding her suitcase, jumped onto the beach. Then he reversed the engines and backed out to the middle of the bay, leaving Victoria standing on that tiny strip of beach looking as if she had just missed the last train to somewhere.
Victoria put the suitcase down in the sand and stepped back from it. “It’s all yours,” she said. But Highball was having none of it.
“No, no.” He waved his gun like an accusing finger. “I am not new at this, my dear. I don’t want to be trapped like some punk. I have heard tales of those James Bond suitcase latches that do unpleasant things to you when you open them.”
Victoria gave him a helpless look. “I do suppose you would know about unpleasant things,” she said. “But that is your business, what you do with the suitcase. I am just the messenger and here only for Maggie. You said bring the case and I brought it. Now send her to me.”
“Not so fast,” he said. “I want you to open the bag for me. That will solve my little concern. And then we need some inventory control here. That way we won’t have any confusion later about what was in it and what wasn’t.”
She gave him a dramatic sigh before bending over to open the suitcase. She flicked the latches up. “Why nothing bad seems to be happening,” she said. Then she opened the lid. “Oh, my, it seems to be nothing but a normal suitcase filled with bags of white powder. Whatever do you think that powder could be?”
“Cute, lady,” Highball said. “But a nice segue, as now I’ll tell you how we will find out what it is you’ve brought me. You are going pick out one bag from the middle of those and bring it to me. I’ll make a little taste test.”
I tensed. Here was where the shit hit the fan. Victoria seemed indifferent. She rummaged through the suitcase, and then stood up holding one plastic bag. “Is this one okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, sounding impatient. “Bring the fucker here.”
Victoria walked over and handed it up to where Highball squatted on the rock. He tucked his pistol under his arm and sat down, tearing open the package. As he moved, so did Victoria, sliding to his right, putting the rock he sat on between them and the guard. She pulled out her gun and shoved it in Highball’s face.
“Careful,” she said, catching him just as he put a finger of the white powder in his mouth. “That stuff will rot your teeth.”
He smiled. “Naughty, naughty. That wasn’t part of the deal. No guns, I’m sure I said that. I know I would have said that. No cops, no guns. How can we deal if you don’t play by the rules?”
“Be creative,” she suggested.
“By the way, that toy of yours doesn’t change anything, except to create your basic standoff. It’s number eighteen in the playbook.”
“Oh, they re-issued the playbook,” she told him.
A shot rang out from the north, chipping rock very close to Victoria’s face. The sniper was calling. Things started to happen at once. I fired in the direction of the sniper that I still couldn’t see, hoping to keep his head down. Startled, the man with the Uzi spun to see what was going on and Maggie pumped three shots into him, knocking him off his perch and into the bushes. Highball rolled off his rock, snapping off one shot in our direction and one in Victoria’s direction as he moved, and then disappeared into a clutch of mangroves.
The gunman on the hill fired again, toward Victoria. This time I saw the muzzle flash and this time I put three rounds right in that area. Luck was with me. A moment later, the gunman came crashing down the hill, rolled to the beach and lay still.
A deathly quiet came over the beach. Maggie ran down to the beach to check on Victoria with me covering her. When there were no more shots, I carefully circled the boulder the man with the Uzi had been standing on before Maggie leveled him. He lay dead in the bushes, his body arched over an Acacia. Not a graceful looking corpse. I rolled him over. Maggie had grouped her shots well, putting two in his face and one in the upper chest.
Down on the beach, Maggie had ripped the tail off her tee shirt and was using it to staunch blood flowing from Victoria’s arm.
“It’s not as nasty as it looks,” she told me when I came up. I gave her my tee shirt and she tore it into more rags. “A piece of rock did the damage, I think, not really the bullet.”
Victoria sat on the sand with a stoic smile. “What’s the score so far?” she asked.
“The two gunmen are dead, and one is tied up on the hill, so Highball is on his own. Ugly Bill has not shown up yet, so I assume he is somewhere up the hill or on his way. He doesn’t like to be late for a party.”
“Why didn’t you chase Highball down?” Victoria asked. “I can take care of this little first aid okay by myself.”
“Because I have cracked ribs, for one thing. And I didn’t see which way he went for another. We will have to spread out and search for him. But meantime, call for Chris and we can get the medical kit from the boat. I want you to get some antibiotic on that right away.”
“No can do,” she said pointing at the bay.
I looked. Chris was gone. “He is allergic to gunfire,” she said. “Forget the medic routine for the moment. Let’s get the creep.”
Searching the tiny island would be no big deal if we went about it in an organized grid search pattern. But I worried about an escape hatch. My best guess had him heading to the house first where he was sure to have ammunition and other supplies. He could have stinger missiles hidden there for all I knew. Although he didn’t know it, he even had one of his men there, only
somewhat damaged. That would change the odds slightly.
We headed up the hill, fanning out to cover more area. At the top of the hill, we paused. There had been no sign of him, no indication that he had come this way, but I could sense that someone was in the house. My hackles went up, and I motioned for Victoria and Maggie to encircle the house. When they were in position, we moved in slowly from three directions. The fact that no one took a shot at us only increased the tension. Was it a trap?
Suddenly a tarp was pulled back.
“What the hell you doing out there?” It was Ugly Bill. “Come in here and help me find something to eat. Something decent, I mean. Where the hell did these boys learn to provision a camp, anyway?” We went in and saw that Bill had been rummaging through all their supplies, tossing the cans of vegetables, what he calls “poisoned veggies” in a corner.
“Highball escaped,” Maggie said her breath coming in gasps. She ran over to throw her arms around Bill.
Bill frowned at her. “Now, Maggie, Ugly Bill’s here. Would I let a thing like that happen after everybody went to so much trouble to catch that bastard? Escape? Of course not.” He pulled back the tarp from another room and there lay Highball, out cold on his back, his face the texture of raw hamburger. Blood poured out his nose and mouth. “Fella was in such a hurry to leave town that he ran right into that wall,” Bill said. “Must’ve happened four, five times before I could stop him. I figure him for a real slow learner.”
“Where have you been all this time?” I asked. “Sitting up here planning dinner?”
Bill laughed. “You know those things that you always leave out of your plan? The little gotchas that make you trip over your dick—sorry, ladies—when it all goes down?” We nodded. “Well, mate, good sailors that we are, we checked the tide tables and the charts to see how the current was tonight, right?”
“Several times,” I said.
“Well, we checked it for the cut, but we forgot to check it for the other side of the island, where I was rowing up in our rather cute and often convenient, but rather poorly designed inflatable dinghy. You might have enjoyed a little current boosting you ashore during your trip, but I got caught in a three-knot beauty moving the wrong direction that made me wonder if I’d get here at all.” He smiled. “Of course, it will make getting back real easy. And, if I saw what I think I saw, we will have to bring Harm around to the bay so we can give all of you a ride home.”
“You saw Chris leave?”
“Like a scalded cat.”
Maggie hadn’t let go of Bill the entire time he’d been explaining. I guess he felt so big and solid and reassuring she felt safe for the first time in a long time. “I want to get back to my boat,” she told him.
“No problem, lady.” And so Ugly Bill put one of the prisoners over each shoulder and carried them down the hill to the beach while I took up guard duty with the Uzi. It’s a nice weapon for that because it is so sinister that it encourages prisoners to not even think about running. Maggie and Victoria made their way down the hill and sat with me to wait while Bill went back over the hill to get the dinghy, make his way back to Harm and bring her around to pick us up.
It took him a bit longer than I thought it should. Victoria’s arm was getting pretty tender and swollen. Maggie was starting to slump with exhaustion. When Harm came around the point, I noticed something on her foredeck, but couldn’t make out what it was. When it was my turn to be ferried out to the boat, I saw that it was a cigarette boat, one of those over-powered, super-fast boats preferred by smugglers, two to one.
“Where did that come from?” I asked.
“I found it on my way back to the boat. Highball had it stashed on the other side of the island. I looked for it, actually. I didn’t think he’d depend on commercial transportation if he decided to make a hasty departure. And it is interesting to note that it doesn’t have adequate room for his entire crew. He may have been planning some layoffs.”
“What do you intend to do with it?”
He slapped me on the back. “I thought you and me might take up water-skiing, Junior. We need us some hobbies.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Everybody spent the night on Harm. She has good, if small staterooms, hot showers, a decent medical kit and a well-stocked galley. She also has a bosun’s locker that doubles as a great brig. We stayed at anchor in the bay until sunrise. Then, after a great breakfast, we took the bad guys to Cumaná and went to see Wilfredo.
The cops were delighted to come out to the boat and take the two men off our hands, even after hearing about the little mess we’d left behind on the island, which they offered to take care of for us. I had been hoping I could be in on questioning the bad guys, but that seemed to be against company policy. You don’t get everything you want.
“I’ll come talk to you at your hotel later,” Wilfredo said. “I will buy you a beer, then you can buy me one, and over friendly conversation we can see where things are.” Since he didn’t offer any options, I accepted the deal.
Outside I remembered the cigarette boat that still sat on Harm’s deck, now covered by a tarp. “I think we should have told them about the cigarette boat,” I told Bill.
He frowned. “It’s mine.” We stood out on the foredeck in the sun feeling the morning warm us as it did the soil of the land. I felt clean. “My boat,” he repeated. “Tradition and common sense says that honest buccaneers get the ships of freebooters as prizes. It’s common as cat shit here on the Spanish Main.”
“It’s sort of an unused tradition these days,” I pointed out. “You might even find another interpretation of the act these days, with all the legalistic jockeying that goes on.”
“It’s mine,” he sniffed. “And it ain’t like I’m hiding something. That boat is in plain sight, and if anybody were to come along and claim it, show me the papers that say they owned it, well I’d be proud as all get out to hand her over. Until then... I think she can ride right where she is. Makes a great hood ornament for Harm, and a fine souvenir of the chase.” And that was the way it was going to be.
We were lucky. Victoria’s car was right where we left it and, with Sammy once again playing babysitter and resident poet on Harm, the rest of us headed for the hotel. Not that we considered it a great place to hang out, but no one wanted to miss out on what Wilfredo was going to say.
I noticed that Maggie and Victoria were becoming very good friends. They were talking together a lot and laughing at private jokes. I wondered if this was a good sign or ominous. It made me feel awkward. Stranger still, both women were wearing some of my clothes. Desperate for something clean after their showers, they had raided my cabin and found tee shirts. Sammy, who was a small man, loaned them each a pair of jeans, which looked a lot better on them than they ever had on Sammy. But that is just my opinion.
The first thing that I did when we reached the hotel was call the doctor, who was able to tell me that Tim was becoming a real pain in the ass and that his nurses were all either falling in love with him or refusing to go to his room.
“The best news I’ve had from you since I met you,” I told the doctor. When I passed the news to the troops, Bill let out one of his patented whoops, guaranteed to embarrass.
After lunch, Victoria demanded the key to my room. “Maggie needs a rest,” she said, “and I’m going to change the dressing on this shoulder.”
“And we want to gossip in private,” Maggie added.
I gave them the key, but I was stunned. “Maggie and Victoria want to gossip? Can you imagine them gossiping? And what about?”
Bill laughed. “Probably really going to talk about the best strategies for small arms cross-fire in a rocky terrain,” he said. “Junior, what you don’t know about women would fill a fair number of good-sized books. Sometimes I think they only go for you because of the dumb hick look of yours they see when they try to tell you something.”
“Hmm,” is what I said. “Hmm, indeed.”
Wil
fredo showed up about six o’clock looking tired. He’d had a long day of it. Bill got him a beer, and he took a grateful sip. He looked at us, took in our expectant faces and squirmed in his chair. “It has been a very hot day. It is fortunate that you had a comfortable place to wait.”
“Tim,” Maggie prompted. “When will you release him?”
“Subtle, Maggie,” Bill said, tugging in his beard. “Real subtle.”
Wilfredo frowned and spread his hands. “I’m afraid I cannot release him.”
“What?” we said in unison.
“We interrogated this Highball and the man working for him. We were very thorough. They are very arrogant. They are unpleasant people. But the hired man, Arturo is his name, is willing to tell us a great deal in return for suffering only a little. So, we can prove that Highball killed María, kidnapped Maggie and, in fact, was involved in a number of crimes that we did not even know had been committed yet. Very convenient for us, I must say. Ramón is still missing and, if we ever find a body, I imagine we can prove he killed Ramón as well.”
“Cut to the chase,” I said.
“What?” he looked puzzled.
“An American idiom,” Victoria said. “Translate it as, what about Tim?”
Wilfredo sighed deeply. His eyes were sad. “I am sad to say that we can also prove, beyond a doubt, that neither of these two was involved in Antonio’s killing.”
“Oh, no!” Maggie cried.
“The day of the murder they were in Margarita.”
“It only takes a few minutes to fly to Cumaná from Margarita,” Victoria said calmly. “A person can be seen in Margarita at lunch, kill a man in Tigrillo in the afternoon and still be back in Margarita for dinner.”
“True. But they were in jail for the entire day. They had made a disgraceful scene with some prostitutes, the night before, destroying the furniture in a hotel room. They were held until money arrived to pay for the damage.”
