Rum Runner eBook_for Epub_Revised

by dannal

  “Well done,” Josue said. “Now change.”

  Suddenly, Max was on offense. Josue stepped one long, slender leg behind the other fluidly and without perceptible effort as he moved side to side in a dangerous blade-swinging ballet.

  “Good,” Josue said. “Keep your breathing even. Don’t strike too hard. That’s it.”

  After training, Max and Josue made a simple lunch of leftover ham and brie cheese sandwiches on sliced baguette accompanied by strong cappuccinos. As they ate, they made plans for the rest of the day. Max’s black leather journal sat open on the kitchen table, and he looked at his notes.

  “Should be about time to distill the batch,” Max said. “You good to go for that?”

  “Ready, Boss,” Josue said, before taking a sip of his frothy cappuccino.

  “Excellent,” Max said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Let’s make some rum.”

  After cautiously disarming the C-4 plastic explosive that stood guard over the underground distillery, Josue turned on the cavern lights, and Max ran through a checklist to ensure they had all of their tools and supplies ready for the process of distilling the rum.

  Max took a gravity reading of the fermented cane juice inside the still. A small amount of the juice was poured into a long beaker. Then a glass instrument that looked a lot like a long glass thermometer was floated inside. Max gave it a spin and wrote down the reading in his black leather journal.

  “Looks good,” he said, jotting numbers down into his journal.

  While it was often common practice in many distilleries to burn the crushed cane stalks for fuel to heat up the fermented juice in the boiler section of the still, Josue instead switched on a powerful propane boiler that looked a lot like an under-counter dishwasher. The boiler would provide a steady supply of heated water to circulate throughout the still’s steam jacket in order to slowly and evenly heat up the fermented cane juice inside.

  It would take time, likely a couple of hours, for the still to heat up to Max’s target temperature, which was about 178 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea was to bring the alcohols in the fermented juice, often called wine, up to their boiling points, until they evaporated and rose up into the conical bell at the top of the boiler. The vapors would then travel down the length of the graceful swan’s neck and into the water-cooled condenser, running out of a valve below, and then drip into a half-gallon mason jar.

  Producing rum in a pot still was all about the careful collection of the distillate, and then the meticulous blending of these elements before the distillate was transferred to barrels for aging.

  The first collected liquid, called the heads, would contain a lot of harsh components such as methanol and acetone, and it was generally separated from the more desirable hearts, which represented the main portion of the distillate.

  Over the next several hours, Max collected the distillate in meticulously labeled half-gallon jars. That way, he could separate each of the delicate stages of the distillate’s transitions from heads to hearts; each one had its own unique aromas and flavor properties. Max would later have the option of blending back in some of these transitional collections with the hearts to create a truly unique rum.

  The distilling process continued until early in the evening, and at the end of the process, Max had collected about ninety gallons of rum hearts, which he transferred to a two-hundred-gallon stainless steel blending vat. He ended up with about two dozen mason jars full of the aromatic transitional collections from the beginning and the end of the process, each one marked with masking tape and a Sharpie marker, and then catalogued in Max’s black book.

  Max and Josue sniffed each of the mason jars, deciding if each one should be set aside for blending with a later batch of rum, or if some or all of it should be mixed back into the blending vat. Each time a mason jar of transitions was blended into the batch, Max noted in his book which number it was, based on the order it came out of the still, and how much of the incendiary liquid he blended back in.

  Max even went into his glass-fronted cabinet to pull out some of his favorite transitions from prior rum batches which he had thoughtfully saved for future batches.

  Any time Max had doubts about adding one of the jars’ contents, he consulted with Josue for a second opinion. Every decision would change the finished product when the spirit ultimately came out of the French oak barrels, likely in about three to five years’ time.

  When Max and Josue were content with the batch of rum they had produced, Max measured the alcohol content, and then poured in previously collected buckets of spring water to lower the spirit’s proof. Then it was time to barrel the rum.

  Max had acquired the barrels from a defunct Scotch whisky distillery that had aged their own distillate in the barrels to elicit the subtle flavors afforded by the French oak. Josue had carefully re-charred the inside of the barrels with a powerful propane torch, toasting the inside surface to mellow and flavor the finished rum. Some of the residual flavors from the Scotch whisky, such as vanilla, caramel, and peat moss, now embedded themselves in the very grain of the wood. It would give Max’s finished rum even more complexity of flavor and character, and would serve to help remove some of the impurities from the rum.

  After all of the hard work, the batch only produced three barrels of finished rum for aging. A couple of gallons of spirit were left over: the small portion that wouldn’t fit in the fifty-four-gallon barrels. Max and Josue had a custom of making punch out of the remainder each time to celebrate the completion of the batch.

  “You are quite an artisan, Maxwell Craig,” a silken voice said from the top of the stairs.

  Max wheeled around, and instinctively moved his hand to his hip, just as he had when Colonel Travere had startled him at the beach bar. But Max saw Vivienne Monet’s face before he drew his FNS .40 caliber pistol from its holster.

  She wore a pink and white striped tank top and khaki shorts, and as she stepped down the staircase into the cavern, Max considered how Vivienne’s long mocha-colored legs appeared to be almost never-ending. As she neared him by the still, Max saw that she had a wallet in each of her hands. “I was just playing with you boys,” she said. Her crooked smirk gave Max a tingle of delight.

  “You’re lucky,” Max said, snatching his wallet out of the private investigator’s hand, and then flipping through it in an exaggerated fashion to ensure the wallet’s contents were all there. “We were going to come after you for these. If Colonel Travere hadn’t shown up with that bottle of Trois Rivières…”

  “Who’s Colonel Travere?” Vivienne asked. She placed her hand on her hip. Max had no doubt she was just making herself comfortable, but the motion made her appear even more model-like than she already did.

  “Travere’s the new head of the Gendarmerie Nationale on Martinique; came here a few months ago. He caught up to me at Maisie’s the other day. Thought he was shaking me down, but after he showed up here last night with a bottle of Trois Rivières single cask, I think he might actually be stalking me.”

  Vivienne laughed. Wow. She has a great smile, Max thought. It almost knocks your breath out, like when you’re a kid and you fall off of the jungle gym and land flat on your back. “Hmm, I don’t know him. Must have arrived after I left.”

  “You were a gendarme?” Max asked, now smirking himself.

  “I’ve already said too much, Maxwell.” Vivienne flashed her intoxicating smile again and tossed Josue his wallet. “You know you should really think about going legit, Max. If you get caught making illegal rum you could get in a lot of trouble. And the client I am working for is not happy with your presence in Martinique.”

  “Now you sound like Travere,” Max said, closing up his black leather journal and tucking it under his arm. “You sure you don’t know the colonel? Anyway, I’m not too worried about that, Viv. I’ll take my chances.”

  Vivienne picked up one of the plastic gallon-sized pitchers filled with freshly distilled rum and gave it a gentle shake to swirl its contents. “So a
re we going to go up to your villa and make some punch, or are we going to stand here in a cave talking all night?”

  Max, Josue, and Vivienne sat on the porch drinking planter’s punches until they lost track of time. At least once, Max fell off his chair laughing; Josue walked down the porch stairs, and then back up on his hands; and Vivienne produced a jar of Creole terrine that she had brought with her. She smeared the meaty spread on hunks of leftover bread and handed them out. Max had not expected to enjoy the pureed spread of chicken and pork, but found it quite nice, especially with a glass of rum.

  Max was about to ask Vivienne if she’d like him to call a friend in Le Robert to come pick her up on his boat—he was certain she shouldn’t drive her own back to town—when his phone began to vibrate in his hand.

  “Who would be calling you at this hour?” Vivienne asked. “A girlfriend, perhaps?”

  Max looked down at the face of his smartphone and saw the name T.L. Wilkinson again. “No, it’s Terry; guy I used to work for. He calls me at weird times to check up on me.”

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” Vivienne asked, pouring herself another punch.

  “I never do,” Max said, and he tucked the phone back into his pocket.

  Vivienne handed him another drink.

  “Yo, who did that!” Tiny Deege said, clutching his nickel-plated Beretta by his side. The diminutive bald-headed gang member looked as if he had finally reached his boiling-over point. “Reggie, man, I know that smell is comin’ up offa you. An’ look at this place, man. We supposed to be livin’ large up in here. This is a yacht! And look at it. Looks like Reggie’s messed-up bedroom back on Lemon Street in here.”

  “What’s all the noise?” Momo said. He had just stepped down the steep staircase from the flybridge where the catamaran’s control console was located, to enter the vessel’s living room-like salon. The rear salon doors had been tucked away to create a wide-open rear wall. This afforded an unencumbered view over the catamaran’s white foamy wake behind them, as the boat cut through the open Atlantic Ocean.

  “Hey, now, if Momo’s down here, who’s up there drivin’?” Zann said, suddenly sounding panicked.

  “The boat is on autopilot,” Momo said. “It’ll stay on the course I set until I turn it off.”

  “What if we crash into something?” Tiny Deege said, tucking his pistol into his front waistband. “We all goin’ die.”

  “If something shows up on radar within two miles of us an alarm will sound,” Momo said. He was starting to feel like the parent on this trip. “Now what you throwin’ yo’ piece around fo’, and what you bickerin’ ’bout, Tiny?” Momo asked; he made certain to inflect his voice with just enough anger to bring a chill into his shipmates.

  “Yo, yo, it’s this mess,” Tiny Deege said. “I feel like I can’t find no peace on here, brother. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  For a moment, Momo wondered if Tiny Deege might suddenly burst into tears; he had at Mama Dorah’s house. Indeed, the salon and galley area inside the forty-four-foot catamaran looked like a landfill. Gazing around the normally posh and comfortable space, Momo saw empty Champagne bottles, empty cookie packages, frozen pizza boxes, chicken bones, and other miscellaneous garbage strewn about, making the room—which was occupied by only four people—seem claustrophobic and crowded.

  “You brothers are goin’ to clean up this room directly,” Momo said commandingly. “Feel me? Directly.”

  Tiny Deege and Zann nodded. Reggie looked up from the screen of the thirty-two-inch flat screen where he was playing an Xbox 360 game just long enough to nod his head. Then he turned back to the game.

  “Now, Tiny Deege, if you feelin’ like you can’t get no peace, why don’t you go down to your stateroom and chill for a bit?” Momo decided that reasoning with the others might be the best way to diffuse a potentially explosive situation. “We all got a stateroom. It ain’t like we all livin’ in the same room or somethin’.”

  “Yo, Momo,” Tiny Deege said, his voice climbing in pitch as he began his protest, “you and Zann got your own staterooms, but I’m doubled up with Reggie, man. We doubled up in a double bed. You feel me? Brother snores, an’ you can smell his shoes from here.” Tiny Deege made a disgusted face and held his nose. He waved his other hand in front of his face. It made Momo laugh.

  Tiny Deege reached for his pistol again.

  “Woah, whoa, Tiny,” Momo said, straining to contain his laughter. “I feel you, brother, but this is what we got goin’ on. There’s plenty other places you can chill. You can sit up with me on the flybridge and lay out on the lounge, listen to some tunes. You can lay out on the big deck on the bow. I mean, you got options, man.”

  “Yo, Reggie, man,” Tiny Deege said, barely eliciting the youngest man’s attention from his video game. “Why don’t you sleep up here in the salon and let me get some peace?”

  Reggie hit the pause button on his game controller. “I don’t think Mama Dorah would like that. You all get a stateroom and I gotta sleep up here.” He hit the button again and returned to killing Nazi zombies on the flat screen.

  “Yo,” Momo said, sounding more heartfelt now. “Why don’t you go down to your stateroom now, and when Reggie comes down to sleep, you can come back up here and chill. That’ll be all right, right? And listen up, fools. Ten o’clock is the curfew.”

  “Ohhh, man!” Zann shouted. Reggie echoed his sentiment.

  “No, man, it’s just for tonight, awright?” Momo said. “We all gotta refocus ourselves and find our chill. Dig? Now you don’t gotta go to sleep at ten, but you gotta go to your stateroom, an’ Deege gonna come up here into the salon and chill. Salon gonna be Tiny Deege’s stateroom tonight. After you chumps clean it up. Dig?”

  Everyone nodded, and Tiny Deege looked genuinely pleased. “Another four hours and you gonna take over at the wheel, Zann,” Momo said. He opened a cabinet door under the galley sink. The wide cabinet was cluttered with bottles of Drano, an orange coiled-up electrical cord, a propane-fueled blow torch, and a box filled with various pairs of Channel Lock and Vise Grip pliers. Momo found a stashed bag full of candy and snatched out a box of red licorice, then headed back up the ladder to the helm on the flybridge.

  Momo actually found it quite peaceful to drive the boat. The guy at the yacht rental place had seemed reluctant to allow Momo to drive the boat himself. Three times he had asked if Momo wanted to hire a captain. But after fifteen minutes of coaching Momo on how to operate the vessel, it was clear the large man had a good handle on it. Besides, Momo had looked the part in his Ralph Lauren blazer and slacks; Mama Dorah had insisted he wear wire-rimmed glasses to make himself look more intelligent.

  Chump fool, Momo thought. Intelligent. If only she knew. The truth was, Momo hated acting like a thug. Growing up in Georgetown as the son of a lawyer and a lobbyist, Momo had known he stuck out. His size alone had contributed a great deal to the other kids’ notion that he was some sort of freak. Momo was called Montgomery back then, and he had always tried to make the best out of whatever situation he found himself in.

  Acceptance into Brown University was supposed to be the great step toward having people regard him as something more than what they perceived him to be: a huge, menacing thug.

  It was all going well, until that one night when Momo found himself in a microbrew pub just off the Brown campus. It was that night when the loud-mouthed ethics major, whose foot he had accidentally stepped on in class earlier that day, singled him out, and pressed him.

  The blond graduate student had played pool with a couple other Brown students. They drank pale ale and did Jagermeister shots all evening, interspersing drinks with finger points and laughter in the direction of Momo, who occupied a small corner table, as he studied for a biology exam early the next morning.

  Momo ignored the jeers, for the most part. He knew they were drunk, and he didn’t really care about their taunts. But after trying to concentrate for nearly an hour while listening to the bullies’ crap,
Momo found himself pushed too far when the blond guy shouted, “Hey, Shaquille, why don’t you bring us our drinks?”

  Momo held quiet until the blond guy left. Then he had followed the belligerent man almost all the way back to his apartment, finally confronting him between a couple of eighteenth-century historical buildings down by the Providence River.

  “Hey, man,” Momo had said. “Hey, just wanted you to know that my name isn’t Shaquille.”

  The blond guy barely turned around to look at Momo. “Oh, sorry. Is it Anfernee?”

  Momo caught up to the guy in about three seconds. He grabbed hold of the blond man’s head. He snapped the guy’s neck right there by the dark water of the steady-flowing Providence.

  Momo had watched the news every night after that, wondering when the police would finally catch up with him. Of course, he avoided the pub where the blond and his friends had bullied him. But after a few weeks, the police had never so much as knocked on Momo’s door.

  Momo knew he couldn’t live with the feeling that the hammer might drop on him at any moment. So he dropped out of school and moved to Miami. His mother was half-Haitian, and the incredibly large young man found quick acceptance in the Little Haiti community. Some of the same characteristics that had made Momo seem like little more than a freak up north were the same ones that gave him near-deity status down in Miami.

  Momo, no, Montgomery, was going to major in business acquisitions. And now, Momo had every intention of fulfilling that dream as the leader of Ti Flow. He would grow the gang like a corporation. They would make gains in capital, in influence, in numbers, and as a result, he would gain even more power.

  Only one more job stood in his way, and it loomed about a thousand miles to the southeast of Momo’s current position. It will be easy, he thought. Easy like snappin’ the neck of that blond-headed fool in Rhode Island.

  Momo kicked his feet up on the control console and poured himself a glass of Cristal. He took a long sip of the Champagne, and then chewed on a stick of red licorice. Yeah, he would kill Josue Remy, and then he would go back to Miami and he would rule; like a king he would rule over his kingdom of Little Haiti.