Under Full Sail - A Connie Barrera Thriller: The 7th Novel in the Series - Mystery and Adventure in Florida and the Caribbean (Connie Barrera Thrillers)

by Charles Dougherty

  "I'll ring him now," Jones said. "Have a safe voyage, and come back to St. Lucia soon."

  Leon Contreras was sharing a pizza with Jorge and Miguel as they listened to the recorded intercepts. They had followed O'Toole and recorded his conversation with SpecCorp with a portable cellphone monitor. Using an unlock code that had been extracted from the clone they had made of the SpecCorp phone, they were able to listen in on his calls now. Intercepting and recording the calls from Oscar Jefferson's prepaid cellphone had been much easier.

  "I think there's more to the senator's interest in Canaday than the bribe," Miguel said, after hearing O'Toole order the interrogation of Marian Canaday and Bert Holsclaw.

  "Yeah, and why's he holding back on having them question Connie Barrera?" Jorge asked.

  "Maybe he's figured out she's dangerous," Contreras said, grinning. "One of these days, when this is over, I want to meet that woman and her husband."

  "What do you mean, Leon?" Miguel asked. "I thought she was your relative. You've never met her?"

  "Never."

  "How are you related, again?" Jorge asked.

  "First cousins," Leon said. "Our mothers were sisters."

  "No shit?" Miguel asked. "And you never met her? You're about the same age, right?"

  "Yeah," Contreras said. "Things were tough back then. Our mothers stayed in touch a little bit, but her folks were always moving, and the labor camps, a lot of them didn't have pay phones. Remember pay phones?"

  "I didn't know you grew up in the camps," Jorge said.

  "Not me. Her. I grew up in L.A., on the streets, remember?"

  "Oh, right. Like us, only L.A.," Jorge said. "How come everybody thinks she's frontin' for this mysterious cartel, anyway?"

  "I'm not sure. That's one of the reasons I'd like to meet her, so I can ask her."

  "You sure she's not?" Miguel asked.

  Contreras thought for a few seconds, chewing his pizza. He shook his head. "It just doesn't work," he said. "She never had a connection with any known drug traffickers, except the ones she helped bust."

  "You think she's one of us? Or DEA, maybe, undercover?" Jorge asked.

  "I've wondered," Contreras said. "Her husband was pretty well connected that way before he retired, but he never did any deep cover stuff that I found out about."

  "I thought he ran MPD homicide," Jorge said.

  "Yeah, he did. But he spent a lot of time on loan to the DEA, too. And he was the MPD liaison to JTTF, too. He's got some serious ties to the FBI from some of that anti-terrorist stuff."

  "How'd she get mixed up with traffickers?" Miguel asked. "I thought she and Russo didn't get together until after he retired."

  "That's right, I think," Leon said. "She first came to light when she helped put away that Alfano guy from Georgia several years ago. She coulda been undercover, I guess, but somehow that doesn't ring true."

  "How'd she get rich, Leon?" Jorge asked.

  Contreras shrugged. "There was a rumor about her and some diamonds that disappeared. Some kind of money-laundering scheme she broke up. That was Alfano, again. I don't think she's working for anybody but herself. But who knows. Look at us." He grinned and reached for another slice of pizza.

  "Anyhow, on to another angle," Contreras said, munching his pizza. "It sounds like Oscar Jefferson's people got to Canaday's wife and her boyfriend before SpecCorp did."

  "Yeah, and that ties back to your cousin again," Miguel said. "How the hell did she and Russo end up rescuing Canaday? You think Jefferson's right? They were following Canaday's boat so they could pick him up?"

  "I don't know," Contreras said, "but if they were, the question is why? How would they ever have gotten hooked up with him?"

  "Good question," Miguel said. "And here's another one: Why the hell is O'Toole so interested in finding Canaday? It's obvious why Jefferson's after him, but why O'Toole?"

  "He wants the bribe?" Jorge said.

  "He's greedy, all right," Contreras said, "but somehow I don't think that's it. He didn't know anything about the bribe until Jefferson tried to call him."

  "Yeah," Miguel said, "and then there's the whole Kilgore thing."

  "You mean killing Pinkie Schultz?" Contreras asked.

  "That, and Holsclaw's call to Kilgore to get the killers to go after Canaday on your cousin's boat," Miguel said. "I'm starting to think maybe Canaday's trying to go into the drug business. He's looking for a source, maybe, and that's what drew him to your cousin."

  "You think he heard the rumors about her and some cartel?" Contreras asked.

  "Yeah," Miguel said. "Also, if he's looking to go into the trade, that may be why O'Toole's so interested in him."

  "Don't forget Kilgore's reaction when he found out Holsclaw had used his guys to try to kill Canaday," Jorge said. "He wanted no part of that; somebody wants Canaday alive."

  "Yeah. Jefferson," Miguel said. "So he can recover the money Canaday took."

  "Lots of possibilities and not enough information," Contreras said. "We need to find out who the scar-faced man is, and how he ties in with O'Toole, too. Let's get a little sleep before something else happens."

  Guillermo Montalba took a sip of wine as he considered what to do about the emerging links between Senator O'Toole and the Barrera woman. SpecCorp had reported the results of their interrogation of the men who had questioned Marian Canaday and her boyfriend. Montalba wasn't surprised to learn that the men worked for Oscar Jefferson, but he was upset by the connection between Canaday and Barrera. He was even more agitated when he heard that Holsclaw had called Dick Kilgore seeking help in eliminating Canaday.

  He was doodling on a legal pad as he struggled to make sense of the data he'd collected. He stared at the web of circles connected by arrows and shook his head. He couldn't understand all the links he had drawn, but there were some clear connections that alarmed him.

  Canaday had enlisted the aid of Barrera in his effort to disappear. Then there was O'Toole's continued interest in Barrera; O'Toole wanted SpecCorp to check her out — again. This wasn't the first time O'Toole had ordered SpecCorp to watch her. Not long before Montalba had taken control of O'Toole's drug business, O'Toole had hired SpecCorp to spy on Barrera because he thought she might be a competitor.

  That had ended badly for SpecCorp and inconclusively for O'Toole. Montalba didn't know why O'Toole had come to suspect Barrera back then, but there were indications that he had privileged information about her from an FBI investigation. Access to ongoing FBI investigations was one of the benefits of O'Toole's seat in the senate.

  Despite O'Toole's professed ignorance about Canaday and the environmental waiver, Montalba couldn't shake the sense that there was something between the developer and the senator besides the alleged bribe. Oscar Jefferson's actions pointed to such a connection, as well.

  And then there was Holsclaw's call to Dick Kilgore. Montalba saw that as closing a loop that started with O'Toole and passed through Steve Canaday and Barrera to Marian Canaday to Holsclaw to Kilgore and back to O'Toole. O'Toole had known about Kilgore's killing Schultz, too. The senator had tried to explain that discovery to Montalba as incidental to another investigation, but Montalba was suspicious of coincidence.

  As he stared at his doodles, it came to him that Gator Jaw Ryan was missing from the loop. Though he was O'Toole's confidant, Ryan had not been in evidence except for the meeting when he suggested that O'Toole hire SpecCorp again. That was at odds with Ryan's hands-on role when he and O'Toole had killed Art Jansen a few months ago. Montalba flipped the page on his legal pad and scrawled "Ryan" across the center of the fresh page.

  Montalba needed answers. Questioning O'Toole wasn't a good option in his view. The less contact they had, the better, from the perspective of privacy. O'Toole was doing enough fumbling already. Montalba didn't want to encourage more. Steve Canaday was missing, and his wife and Holsclaw were dead. That left Kilgore and Barrera as potential sources of information. Barrera was risky; Montalba didn't know where she was
connected, but she had some stroke from somewhere. Everybody that crossed her either died or went to prison.

  Kilgore, on the other hand, was at Montalba's mercy, and it would soon be time to replace him anyway. Montalba pondered how to use Kilgore to force O'Toole to show his hand.

  Montalba finished his glass of wine and tore the page of scribbles from his legal pad. As he fed the sheet into the shredder, he continued to stare at the page with "Ryan" written in the middle.

  "Ryan and Kilgore, Kilgore and Ryan," he muttered, convinced he'd found a way to put himself in the loop.

  25

  “Good morning, Oscar."

  "Hey. What's new?" Jefferson asked.

  "We hit a snag down in the islands, but I got a little more on those people that rescued Canaday."

  "What kind of snag? I thought you did okay with Canaday's wife and her boyfriend."

  "The guys who questioned Holsclaw and Canaday's wife disappeared. They didn't call in, and we can't find a trace of them. Their hotel rooms in St. Lucia are cleared out; in fact, the hotel claims they never heard of them. Same with their rental car. It's damn strange. Not your problem, but I thought you should know."

  "Yeah, okay. Were they reliable? I mean, you don't think they just decided to skip out on you, run up their expense account, or something?"

  "We're not ruling out anything, but that's not likely. They've been with us a long time, at least for this kind of business. We get some oddballs, but not those two. We figure somebody spotted them and decided to get rid of them."

  "Canaday?" Jefferson asked.

  "He's a possibility, I guess, but so far, we think he's a lone wolf. I mean, sure he hired this lawyer to set up his fake identity, but taking out a team like that smacks of organization, you know? Those two were pros at this kind of thing. Wiping them off the map so fast took more than a couple of local thugs."

  "Don't forget Canaday somehow lined up Russo and Barrera to fish him out of the drink. That's on top of hiring the lawyer. There may be more to Canaday than we thought," Jefferson said.

  "No shit, Oscar. Speaking of Russo and Barrera, we got a little more background on her. There may be something there. Remember, you thought maybe Canaday was trying to go into the drug business with your money?"

  "Yeah. What did you find?"

  "Nobody's ever tied her to a deal, but several heavy hitters have tangled with her and gone down, hard. They all thought they were gonna score big with some new cartel that she's part of."

  "What do you mean, 'gone down hard?'"

  "A couple of 'em that crossed her just flat out disappeared. Several others are in the pen. She seems to have a way of setting them up for the feds without getting caught herself. That leaves her and her bunch an open field, kinda."

  "You think she's DEA or something? I mean, that would be a little too obvious, with a retired cop for her husband, don't you think?"

  "Yeah. Russo's a straight arrow, from everything we found out, but she's done some shady shit."

  "What kind of shady shit?" Jefferson asked.

  "Barrera stole a bunch of diamonds from a couple of guys in the Bahamas that were laundering money. Then she chartered a yacht from a gal whose father's a serious arms dealer to get away. They did some shit nobody wants to talk about."

  "They who?" Jefferson asked.

  "Barrera and the two broads that ran the charter boat she hired."

  "Who's the arms dealer?"

  "J.-P. Berger. His daughter's name is Danielle. Dani, she's called. She and a gal named Liz Chirac run a charter yacht that looks just like Barrera and Russo's. It's called Vengeance."

  "Never heard of any of them except Barrera and Russo. Was this before she took up with Russo?

  "Yeah, the diamond thing was. But there's other stuff since she hooked up with him."

  "Like what?"

  "She told one high-roller that she was using Russo to manipulate the feds, feed them false info. From what that guy said, she's slicker than a rotten banana peel."

  "What kind of things did she and those two gals do?"

  "You name it. Killed people, blew up megayachts, all kinds of stuff."

  "How come they're still running around loose? Sounds like they ought to be in prison."

  "They're connected, all over the place. And the people they hurt? They always manage to make their victims come out looking like the bad guys."

  "This sounds like bullshit," Jefferson said. "You sure of your sources?"

  "Most of it comes from two or three guys that are doing life sentences courtesy of these people. Yeah, I believe it."

  "Barrera sounds like the kind of person that might have made your team disappear, then."

  "She does, except she and Russo were nowhere in the neighborhood."

  "You had somebody watching her when that all went down?"

  "Yeah. That's what you pay me for, remember?"

  "You got a team with balls enough to question her and Russo?"

  "It'll cost you, but yeah, we can do that."

  "How soon? I have some people breathing down my neck."

  "Soon. They left St. Lucia this morning, headed south. We can catch them at sea, along the west coast of St. Vincent. They ought to be sailing along there late in the day, and it's a good place to hit them. I should have some answers for you tonight, at the latest."

  "Good morning," Montalba said, cradling the SpecCorp phone on his shoulder as he stirred sugar into his coffee. "What do you have for me?"

  "The situation is fluid; we need some direction, if you don't mind."

  "What's happening?"

  "Several things. One, the police in St. Lucia have discovered that Steve Canaday flew to Martinique two days ago. Should we track him?"

  "Yes, I think so, but only to know where he is. I don't need detailed surveillance now."

  "Very well. We can do that easily enough by monitoring the immigration databases. If you change your mind, give us as much time as possible to get a team on him, though. Martinique's a big place."

  "Okay. What else?"

  "Our other client, your friend, has asked us to interrogate Barrera and Russo."

  "I'd prefer that you not do that right now."

  "We thought you might feel that way. They're dangerous; your friend has no idea what happened the last time he sent us into an encounter with them. We lost several men, not to mention equipment."

  "I'm aware of that," Montalba said, "but it's of no concern to me. Why do you mention it?"

  "We thought you should know, in case you change your mind."

  "What if I do? Are you suggesting you can't handle them?" Montalba asked.

  "Not at all, but we won't make the same mistake twice. If we go after them again it will be quite expensive — far beyond anything our other client would expect."

  "I see. Again, I'd prefer that you not undertake that operation without my okay. Is that clear?"

  "Yes. However, this will be the second operation for our other client that you have vetoed. He may become upset; we're hoping that you'll agree to let us feed him a bit of information on the other matter. If necessary, we can slant it somewhat, with your guidance."

  "You mean the data from the Windsong interrogation?"

  "Yes, exactly."

  "I think you can safely pass that to him; it's of little consequence to me now."

  "Thank you. We thought the same thing."

  "Is there anything else?"

  "Because of the Windsong exercise, we've been monitoring the competition, if you take my meaning."

  "Yes, I know who you mean. Have you learned anything interesting?"

  "Yes. They've decided to interrogate Barrera and Russo."

  Montalba chuckled. "I see. And do you propose to monitor their progress?"

  "With your concurrence. We thought that if they appeared to succeed, you might wish us to piggyback on their efforts, so to speak."

  "If they succeed, I think that would be appropriate," Montalba said, "but I don't think it woul
d be healthy for your other client to hear the results without my prior approval."

  "Of course not. We thought you might be worried about his health. We'll be in touch as events dictate, unless you have something else for us now."

  "No, I think not. I look forward to our next communication."

  Connie stood up behind the helm and cupped her hands around her mouth, yelling over the wind, "Hey, Paul!"

  Paul poked his head up, standing on the companionway ladder, a slice of bread slathered with mustard in his hand. "Yes?"

  "Are you at a stopping place?"

  "I've almost got our lunch made. What's up?"

  "Take a minute and join me. There's a boat adrift off the starboard bow that looks half-sunk."

  "Right with you, skipper." He ducked below for a few seconds and emerged wiping his hands on a paper towel.

  "Over there," she said, pointing and handing him the binoculars. "What do you make of it?"

  Paul stuffed the paper towel in his pocket, took the binoculars, and braced himself against the boom gallows. He studied the other boat for 15 seconds. "Yeah, she's adrift, and she's riding pretty low in the water. Looks like a woman in the cockpit, but she's not moving. We should swing by and take a closer look."

  "Do we have to?" Connie asked. "Haven't we done enough of that kind of thing? We just got over the last one and – "

  "Come on, Connie. You know it's the right thing to do. That could be us out there."

  "Oh, all right," she said through clenched teeth. "I'll fall off the wind and you can ease the sheets. I'll take us in close on her leeward side."

  Paul nodded and freed the main sheet from the jaws of the self-tailing winch. "Whenever you're ready," he said.

  Connie turned the helm as Paul let the sheet slip around the drum of the winch. "I'm on course," she said.

  Paul cleated the main sheet and eased the headsails. He got to his feet and moved to stand next to Connie as they came abreast of the drifting yacht. "Hey!" he bellowed, making a megaphone of his hands.

  "I think she moved a little bit," Connie said, her eyes on the woman sprawled in the cockpit, "but I'm not sure. She may just be rolling with the motion of the boat." Connie passed within a few yards of the other vessel and when it was astern, she said, "Heaving to."