Bluewater Bullion: The Seventh Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 7)

by Charles Dougherty

  "Speaking of sicko, I still can't believe the way you taunted the two of them. You like to live dangerously."

  "Well, I waited until you were in position to jump him. I figured he'd come unglued, and that could only help. I was too busy with Chen to see what happened after that."

  "He came unglued, all right. He forgot about everything except shooting you; it was almost funny, watching him jerk the pistol around trying to get a shot. You kept Chen in his line of fire the whole time."

  "I was hoping I would, but I was more worried about staying stuck to Chen so he didn't have room to do any of his fancy stuff. Most of those guys don't learn to fight in a clench, so if you crowd them enough, they're lost."

  "I'll remember that," Liz said. "Looked like Bar Room 101 from what I could see. Did you set him up to charge you? Or did you think he was out on his feet when you turned to look at me?"

  "It was a setup; but I wasn't expecting the charge. I thought he'd try another kick; I was planning to step back and then put out an eye while he was off balance. I had him figured for the brains of the pair. I was hoping we could question him."

  "We got the name of their employer, but not much else," Liz said.

  "Yates is bound to know the rest," Dani said.

  "But do you think he'll tell us?"

  "He will if he wants to keep using Vengeance. This isn't over, you know. Whoever this Marc Jackson character is, he's still going to want his money, at least."

  "At least?" Liz asked.

  "Yes, at least. Most likely, he'll want revenge. It won't make him look good to his clients if word gets out that his muscle got taken down by two women."

  "How do you figure word will get out? I don't think Gerald's going to tell anybody, do you?"

  "It depends on how he's questioned, Liz. I think he'd sell us out in a heartbeat to save his skin if Jackson cornered him."

  "It's not over, is it?" Liz asked. "I wasn't thinking beyond the immediate problem."

  "No, it's not over. I think it's probably just started."

  "Why do you say that? At least we know who's after us."

  "I don't think a bookie would have sent a surveillance team."

  "I see what you mean; Rigo and Chen probably had nothing to do with the woman with the camera."

  "Right. Let's get rid of our guests; we can finish the cleanup tomorrow, now that the worst of the bloodstains are gone. I'll cut out the splintered teak and lay in a dutchman while we're running the search patterns tomorrow, and Vengeance will be good as new."

  "Why is a patch like that called a dutchman?" Liz asked

  "I don't know; we should look it up."

  Liz fired up the diesel and turned the bow toward shore. They rode along in silence for a while, watching the shoreline draw closer. Dani was just able to make out details of some of the buildings along the beach south of the Jolly Harbour entrance when a repetitive chime went off.

  "That's not the satellite phone," Liz said.

  "No," Dani agreed. "It sounded like it came from the starboard-side deck."

  Liz stood and stepped out of the cockpit. She had barely taken a step when she saw the glint of the setting sun on smooth glass about halfway forward. "Smartphone," she said, retrieving it. "That was a voicemail alert."

  "One of them must have dropped it," Dani said.

  "Probably Rigo," Liz agreed, returning to the cockpit and holding the phone so that Dani could see the picture on the screen.

  They studied the explicit image of Chen in an almost nonexistent thong bathing suit. "Maybe they really were gay," Dani said.

  "I was pretty sure before," Liz said. "You weren't? But you ... "

  "I didn't even think about it. I just figured it would set that little creep Rigo off if I accused them of being gay. Is it password protected?"

  "Doesn't appear to be," Liz said, touching the screen.

  "You have one new message," droned the electronic voice. "First new message ... "

  There was a shrill tone, and then a well-modulated male voice said, "It's me. The man is paid up; you boys forget about him and those women and come on home."

  Dani took the phone from Liz and scrolled through the log of incoming calls. "That was about half an hour ago," she said. "We must have been out of cell phone range."

  "Now what?" Liz asked. "The timing was lousy. If he had called a couple of hours earlier ... "

  Dani nodded, lost in thought. She opened the phonebook screen and scrolled down. "That came from Jackson. The number matches."

  "So Gerald paid up, but Jackson didn't call off his dogs in time," Liz said.

  Dani was frowning, staring out at the horizon.

  "I recognize that look. What are you thinking?"

  She looked at Liz for a moment. "Provocation. It worked with Rigo; might as well try it on his boss."

  "How?" Liz said.

  "We'll send him a message in his own language; shake him up."

  "Aren't you worried that you're poking a hornets' nest?" Liz asked.

  "They're going to swarm eventually. This way, we'll know when to expect it." Dani touched the screen of the phone and held it to her ear.

  "But ... " Liz started to object, stopping when Dani shushed her and switched on the speakerphone function.

  "Rigo?" a man answered.

  "Shut up and listen, Jackson. You blundered into something you don't understand. Rigo and Chen are dead. Unless you want to join them, take your money and disappear. You got that?"

  "Who are you?"

  "My name is Dani Berger; you sent your boys after the wrong woman. If I ever even hear your name again, you're a dead man, asshole." She disconnected and turned to Liz, a grin on her face.

  "Sometimes I think you're nuts, Dani. Why'd you give him your name?"

  "He probably had it anyway; giving it to him sends him a signal about how insignificant I think he is."

  "But that will just make him angry," Liz objected.

  "Either angry or scared, depending on how much thought he gives it. If it makes him angry, I haven't lost anything, because he would have come after me anyway. If he's smart enough to be scared, then I've won the first round. My bet is he'll be smart enough to think about things before he charges into a trap."

  "What trap?"

  "The one we're going to plan later this evening, just in case he's dumb."

  "You talking about me behind my back?" Gerald asked, a grin on his face as he joined them in the cockpit.

  "We'd never do that," Liz said. "You're our meal ticket." She gave him a dazzling smile.

  "Well, I wouldn't blame you. I feel pretty dumb for getting you two and Nick into this."

  Dani and Liz exchanged glances, wondering why Gerald had turned charming. Despite his words, they could see that he was still shaken.

  "How's Nick, anyway," Liz asked.

  "Better. He says he's had worse concussions; he just needs to rest for a while. We won't be going out tomorrow." He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. "We talked it over and agreed that we need to come clean with you."

  "What do you mean by that?" Dani asked.

  "I told Nick what happened; we're both impressed that you two took down Rigo and Chen. Nick's had the training for that sort of thing. He's not easy to impress."

  Dani said, "Come clean with us about what?"

  "My gambling. I'm, uh ... I've got a little, um ... "

  Dani and Liz let the silence hang.

  "I'm a compulsive gambler, see. Marcus Jackson's a bookie, a loan shark, too. I owe him a lot of money, and I don't have the liquidity to make good on it right now. I need the advance from this next book deal to get square with him."

  Liz gave Dani a quizzical look; Dani shook her head.

  "So when will you pay him, then? Will he wait for your advance?"

  "He won't wait until I finish the book, but my agent and my lawyer are trying to squeeze the publisher for enough money to get me out of hock. Besides an advance on the next book, I'm prepared to sign over rights
to future works."

  "I don't understand why you're telling us this, Gerald," Liz said.

  "I've put you at risk; I shouldn't have done that. As far as Jackson's concerned, he'll come after you, now, because you killed his thugs."

  "How's Jackson going to find that out, Gerald? We're not going to tell him. He might just as well think you or Nick did it," Dani said.

  "Um, good point," Gerald swallowed hard. "Anyway, I want you to know I appreciate what you've done for me, and if you stick with me through this, I'll make it well worth your while. I still need your help with the search and salvage. However much I clear above what I owe Jackson, I'll cut you two in for a big percentage, same share as Nick. I can't get into more details yet, because there's too much up in the air, but I just wanted you to know. Same deal I've got with Nick, that's what we'll do with you two."

  "We would each need the same share as Nick," Dani said. "We're not splitting the same sized share he gets."

  "But Nick's doing all the diving, and he ... "

  "And he hasn't had to kill anybody because of you," Liz said.

  "Point taken, Liz. Okay. You're each on a par with Nick, whatever that works out to be. Fair enough?"

  "Yes," Liz said.

  "Dani?"

  "Of course, Gerald."

  ****

  The man called Jones was staring absently from the window of his downtown hotel room. He had a view of the endless marshes that stretched into South Carolina on the other side of the Savannah River, but his mind was elsewhere. He had just spoken with his lead agent in Antigua, learning that Vengeance had returned after a two-hour excursion.

  The women had dropped Yates and Thompson off at the villa and taken the boat back out to the mooring field for the night. There were only a few of the moorings that were occupied; Vengeance had no nearby neighbors. The man had detailed one of his contingent to keep the boat under observation from another villa that the agent had rented as a short-term base of operations. So far, there had been no sign of the two men who had hijacked the vessel earlier. Perhaps the hijacking had been staged as a cover for something else, as his agent had suggested, but Jones couldn't imagine what that might be. The agent, who dealt strictly in facts, had ventured no opinion, even when prompted by Jones.

  Jones was even more suspicious of Jackson's motives than he had been earlier. Unencumbered by any legal constraints, he had arranged to have recording devices placed on Jackson's telephone lines, but so far, nothing of interest had been picked up.

  He had people watching Jackson's residence, where the bookie had his main office. When there was an opportunity to do so unobserved, they would plant listening devices in the house, but for now, his oversight of the man's interactions was limited. They had not maintained their surveillance long enough to know how often their target left his house.

  In the morning, his operatives would arrange for access to billing records for Jackson's various telephone lines, but for the moment, Jones was forced to use his imagination to try to work out an explanation for what had been observed. His people in Antigua were going to question the two women, but they were still working out how to do that without arousing suspicion.

  Earlier today, one of his researchers had checked out the charter operation through the broker in Fort Lauderdale who handled bookings for the women. There was nothing there that aroused suspicion; the women had been running charters on the boat for a few years, and they had a number of favorable reviews from satisfied clients. One of the women had dual French and U.S. citizenship, and the other was Belgian. There was nothing that indicated prior contact with Yates, Thompson, or Jackson.

  Jones's researcher had gone a step beyond that in the case of Thompson, checking to see if the charter broker knew anything about Thompson's former employer, Merrill Bond, who also had an office in Fort Lauderdale. The broker had recognized the name, but that was because of Bond's local notoriety.

  The researcher, after hacking the broker's computer to learn all she could about Vengeance and the two women, had called the broker. Pretending to be a potential client with an interest in chartering Vengeance, she had listened to the broker's sales pitch. Then she had casually mentioned reading about Bond recently.

  "He's in Fort Lauderdale, isn't he? Do you know if he would ever charter a boat like Vengeance for his work?"

  The broker had laughed. "No way. You'd think that guy was the CIA or something, the way he guards his privacy. I mean, he's a real publicity hound; he's always looking for investors, but when it comes to letting anybody close to his business, he's like a clam."

  "He came across as charming in the interview I read; he had a sidekick that was in the pictures, too. Good-looking guy. Thomas, or Tompkins, maybe?"

  "Yeah," the broker chuckled. "Nick Thompson. He was kind of a local stud; made the rounds of the singles places for a while. One of my friends dated him a few times, but she decided he was mostly bullshit. Good looking enough, but not overly bright, and definitely a tomcat type. He and Bond had some kind of falling out, I guess; he left here several months ago. Or maybe he found a rich widow."

  "Wow; Fort Lauderdale sounds like an exciting place for a single girl. Maybe I should spend my holiday there instead of chartering a boat."

  "Well, it's not an either-or situation," the broker said. "There are some nice yachts available right around here if you're interested. There's a great smaller boat with a handsome, single skipper. Just let me know, okay?"

  "Sure. I was thinking about bringing my girlfriend along, but maybe my odds would improve if I didn't. I'll think it over. Thanks for your help. I'll be in touch."

  ****

  Marcus Jackson sat in his home office, sipping a stiff drink. He had learned over the years that it was folly to take action if he didn't understand his situation, and he was lost at the moment. He wasn't sure what to make of the phone call from the Berger woman. The fact that she had called on Rigo's phone was worrisome, but there could be any number of explanations for that.

  One thing that he couldn't overlook, though, was the fact that he had not heard from Rigo or Chen. They had been staying at a beachfront hotel that was near Jolly Harbour. He had tried calling their room earlier, right after the Berger woman had called him. There was no answer, and he had declined to leave a message.

  If they had carried out their plan, the woman should have been in no shape to call him, regardless of how she came to have the phone. He was almost certain that they had boarded the boat; he had been talking to Rigo as Vengeance approached the dock where he and Chen were waiting. As he worked his way through the possibilities, he became more uneasy. He needed more information.

  He opened his desk drawer and selected one of several unused prepaid cell phones. They had been bought at different times and in different places; he kept a stock of them for situations like this. He had no illusions about the privacy of telephone calls; wiretaps were a fact of life in his business. He keyed in Mickey's number. Mickey answered without identifying himself, and Jackson spoke.

  "Next flight to Antigua. Know where they're staying?"

  "Mm-hmm," Mickey responded, and hung up.

  Jackson pried the back from the phone he'd just used and removed the SIM. Bending a paper clip around it, he held it in the flame from a butane lighter until it was a charred, curled-up blob of plastic. He took it to the bathroom adjoining his office and flushed it down the toilet. He put the phone down on the tile floor and crushed it under his heel, stomping it until it was in several pieces. He scooped the pieces into his hand and returned to his desk, dropping the fragments of plastic in an envelope. He would toss it out the window of his car into the Wilmington River as he crossed the high bridge on his way to dinner.

  Chapter 13

  Vengeance, tethered to a mooring, swung to the gentle morning breeze that wafted through Jolly Harbour. Dani held a razor-sharp chisel, working it carefully as she cut out the splintered piece of teak planking where Rigo's stray bullet had struck. Liz was in the cockpit as
well, saw in hand, shaping a small, thin block of teak to fit into the cavity that Dani was cutting. They had gone through their box of scrap teak lumber earlier, selecting a piece that matched the damaged area in grain and color.

  "I'm still wondering why he lied to us yesterday afternoon," Liz said.

  "Yates?" Dani asked.

  "Yes."

  "Which time?"

  "About not being able to pay the loan shark," Liz said. "You think he lied about something else?"

  "Given the lie about the loan shark, I think everything he said after that is suspect. Don't you?"

  "Yes, probably so," Liz said. "So you don't think he's going to make us both rich?" She smiled.

  "There's another inconsistency," Dani said, putting the chisel down and flexing her fingers. "He maintained earlier that there was probably nothing of value aboard Phaedra when she went down."

  "I hadn't even made that connection, Dani. Silly me."

  "So he generously agreed to give us equal shares with Nick in a worthless wreck," Dani said.

  "Or he slipped up and he's expecting to find something worth salvaging," Liz said, frowning. "Either way, I guess he wasn't being honest with us, huh?"

  "Right." Dani picked up the chisel again. "My bet is he thinks there's something worth salvaging. For all we know, he made up the whole story about Phaedra, though. He could be after some other wreck he found out about."

  Liz put down the saw. She removed the block of teak from the jaws of the portable vice and moved over beside Dani. "Let's see how it fits."

  Dani took the block and tried putting it in the hole she had chiseled. It was a little too big to drop in. "That's pretty good, Liz. Why don't you clean up the edges with some sandpaper, and then hold it in place and I'll trace around it with the knife? I'll just have to shave the edges of the hole a bit more."

  "Okay." Liz took the block back. "Back to Yates — why would he tell us he couldn't pay this loan shark? Jackson's message to Rigo and Chen was pretty clear."

  "I can't come up with an answer for that. Maybe Yates made some kind of partial payment? Maybe he tricked this Jackson somehow? None of the possibilities makes any sense."