“Thank God that Alisa and Josh were able to connect the blue ring tattoo to the Novak coat of arms. They made the connection before the authorities did.”
“They’re quite a team,” I said.
“Think about this crazy shit. The number they assigned Natalie was 8295. From all the research the CSI unit has completed on the data files, Chas’ father started off with girl number one.”
Shaking my head, I could feel my gut tighten. “Eight thousand girls have gone through his trafficking process?
“It appears that way, yes.”
“Did Tiara know?”
“Doesn’t appear that the prostitution side had any connection to Chas’ torture chamber or the trafficking business,” Henry said.
“I know Josh and Alisa learned that Tiara used to be a madam in Nevada before changing her name years ago and moving to Texas.”
Henry nodded, knocking back another swig of beer. “I thought you said Guidry would show up?”
“Yeah, he and Kylie are in town, but I think they’re celebrating some dating anniversary. I got a feeling they might not make it.”
“Hell, she deserves the Purple Heart for what she did, going undercover to try to break up the trafficking ring.”
“Guidry called it Operation Ringworm. His idea.”
I winked at Henry, then sipped my beer, never feeling more appreciative of my life, my little girl, all my friends, even if Alisa had spilled the beans about my birthday.
“Daddy, you get to blow out the candle now.”
Turning around, Samantha walked toward me, balancing a double-decker chocolate cake with a single candle in the middle. Cindy led the “Happy Birthday” chorus.
I leaned down to blow out the candle, then looked up in the sky.
“One wish, Daddy. That’s all you get,” Samantha said, shoving hair out of her face.
I blew it out then picked her up, tickling her tummy.
“What did you wish for, Daddy? Tell me. I gotta know.”
“He can’t tell us, Samantha,” Alisa said. “Then it won’t come true.”
“What are you talking about? It already has.” I put an arm around Alisa, kissed the top of her thick locks.
Someone kicked the soccer ball, and everyone chased after it, leaving Alisa and me alone, the tiny candle illuminating her amber eyes, full of hope and anticipation. She still had her arm around my waist, then she suddenly let go, sipping her beer.
“Can I cut you a piece of cake?” I asked.
“Josh and I decided to take a break,” she said, ignoring my question. “We’re still friends and all, but there was something missing.”
I nodded, realizing how close we were for her to share something like that with me.
“Josh is a good guy. I thought you saw yourself having a family in the future. Are you cool about everything?”
Lifting her chest, she pushed out a breath and nodded. “I’m in a good place,” she said, watching Natalie pick up Samantha and twirl her around. “A real good place.”
We watched as Justin chased after the ball, attempting to leap between the chains of a swing. He clipped his shoe on the seat and fell face first into a mound of wood chips.
Alisa and I nearly spilled our beers we laughed so hard. She grabbed my hand to keep her balance.
I flinched. That was my bad hand.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. Are you okay?” She took my hand, turned it palm up, and touched my fingers.
We each took a step forward to where our hips touched. Looking into my eyes, Alisa rested her hands on my chest.
“Have I told you how much I appreciate everything you did to find my sister?”
“A couple of times, yeah. Only for you,” I said, realizing how it sounded after the words left my mouth.
She popped my chest once.
Looking beyond her shoulder, I saw Henry on his phone, his face contorted. Still in his phone conversation, he walked toward us. I could tell he had news to share.
I wrapped Alisa in my arms, and she pressed her head against my chest as we rocked back and forth.
Leaning back, she grabbed my arms. “My sister experienced a hell that is hard to fathom,” she said. “And along the way, I know I was a basket case. But you stuck with me the entire time. You were my rock.”
I smiled. “You’ve done a lot for me, for us. You’re quite a woman, Alisa. I’m lucky to have you in my life.”
Meeting me halfway, we kissed for the second time in a month. But this one wasn’t born from sheer drama or near loss of life.
Samantha ran up as our lips parted, our eyes still holding each other.
“Daddy, are you going to get married or something?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Alisa jumped in.
“It’s cool to have great friends. And your dad’s one of my best friends.”
I shot Alisa a quick wink, wondering if we’d just redefined our partnership.
BOOKER – No Más
A Novel
Volume 5
By
John W. Mefford
1
My first mistake became vividly obvious two minutes after the taxi driver zipped out of Joaquin Balaguer International Airport. Without even tapping the brake, the bushy-haired driver barreled the hunk of metal into a herd of vehicles, leaning the rust-covered four-door so hard to the left we clipped the front fender of an open-bed truck carrying chicken coops. I slid across the glazed, plastic-covered backseat, slamming me against the door—which then flew open.
Clinging to the door, my momentum shoved me out into traffic, my ass nearly grazing the pavement at about fifty miles per hour. My eye caught the same black fender we’d just hit, only inches from the swinging door. Fighting a potent centrifugal force, I muscled up to where my hands had a solid grip of the window opening. Just as I torqued my torso to thrust my body into the backseat, the car tumbled over clumps of hay, sending me straight up, then back down.
Something popped at the hinge, and the door dropped a good six inches.
The shocks must have been made from sponges as metal scraped the pavement, sending sparks into my eyes. Sensing I was seconds away from tumbling into the chaotic traffic and ending up as road kill, I swung my right arm toward the frame of the car and grabbed it. Using my opposite arm to push off the flapping door, I hurled my body into the backseat. The second my butt hit plastic, the door snapped off the frame and cartwheeled down the road, splitting traffic in half.
At age thirty-two, I thought I’d just experienced my first heart attack.
But that was just in the first couple of miles when my heart palpitations hit meteoric highs.
Horns blared all around us. The driver simply saluted his fellow road warriors and pulled something out of his pocket and lit it up. He inhaled twice, then grinned, gazing into the cracked rearview. “Bueno Focus.”
As my breathing motored like a jackrabbit, my eyes squinted against the remnants of hay fluttering into the car. “What?” I asked, realizing he probably couldn’t speak a lick of English.
“Bueno Focus.” He tapped the discolored yellow dashboard, showing off teeth the same color.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say the amused cab driver was part of a movie set featuring the worst stunt drivers on the planet. I just then noticed the logo on the wheel and pieced together what he was trying to tell me. His Ford Focus was a good car.
I would have agreed, maybe about fifteen years ago.
The cab hit a patch of traffic, and we crawled along for a while, which only drew more stares. Scared eyes glanced at me as if I’d taken part in some atrocity. Releasing my clutch of the front passenger seat, I tried to ignore the shifting heads and beady eyes, and leaned against the plastic, finally able to take in a deep breath.
I smelled pot. I swatted the air under my nose, shooting an eye toward the driver, who instantly jerked the car onto the graveled shoulder and gunned the little four-banger. At the next opening, he veered
left without so much as glancing in his mirrors. We nearly side-swiped a convertible sports car. I grabbed the front seat and promised myself not to let go until we reached our destination.
Twenty minutes later, Meat Head made a beeline toward a tiny opening in front of Hotel Don Juan—parallel parking apparently wasn’t part of his driving test. He shoved the fourteen-foot car nose-first into a ten-foot space, popping the right front tire onto the curb.
For whatever reason, I chose not to slide out the open-aired side. Instead, I heaved myself out the right side, grabbing my brown leather duffel bag.
Which leads me back to my list of mistakes. The second one hit me in the wallet. I should have negotiated a price before I got in the car.
“¿Usted me puede pagar 50 dólares? O lo podría llevar a una mala parte de la ciudad?”
In so many words, I was able to piece together that I had to fork over fifty US dollars or he would keep driving me until he reached the bad part of the city.
Not willing to put my life on the line to save a few bucks in a country I knew nothing about—and realizing I could bill my new clients—I handed over three twenties and held out my hand through the driver’s side door.
“¿Diez?” I wanted my ten bucks in change.
Cackling up a wet lung, his eyes hidden under wrinkled flesh, he popped the clutch, and the vehicle screeched away, barreling over my sandaled foot, leaving a plume of polluted smoke.
“Uggh!” I yelled out, hopping on one foot. I would have shot him the finger if I didn’t think I’d draw the ire of his taxi-driver brethren hovered around me. Maybe he was in a hurry to go find his door. Or maybe he’d dump the car and use the fifty bucks I just gave him for an upgrade.
“Mother…” I said, under my breath, wiggling my toes to determine if the three thousand pounds of torque had displaced any of the hundreds of bones in my foot.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a guy waving an arm. I turned my head while still leaning over and bending my toes, my leather duffel bag sitting next to me.
“Our Lady of Divine Providence.” Eyes wide with reverence or fear—I wasn’t sure—a kid crossed himself. “That is my church. I made a pledge to never curse, and to call out all others who do. There is a better place. And I can take you there.”
He’d yet to blink once.
“Sorry if I offended you,” I said, noticing peach fuzz above his lip. “It’s just this ass…uh, almost killed me driving like a bat out of hell, then ripped me off, and ran over my frickin’ foot. Welcome to Santo Domingo, I guess.”
I turned my attention back to my foot, but a quick blur snapped my head right. The little heathen had stolen my bag—a very expensive bag at that.
“Fuck!” My patience meter was redlining as I darted off to catch the little shit. The way the locals were playing me, I must have had “Naive American” plastered on my forehead.
Weaving through people like slalom skiers, I wasn’t gaining much ground, even though the kid didn’t look a day older than thirteen. I caught the flash of his red shirt hurtling a small stone wall, the bag’s straps draped over his back. He was a pro at this and probably knew exactly how to elude any tourist ballsy enough to chase after him.
Veering right, I took a sharper angle and leaped over the same stone wall farther down, just as he looked back.
That was his biggest mistake.
He didn’t see the bellman crossing the path with a cart full of luggage. The kid went airborne.
"Mierdita. Debería de llamar a la policía para meter tu culo sin hogar en la cárcel," the bellman yelled at the kid, who appeared woozy just as I ran up.
I couldn’t understand much of his rapid-fire Spanish rant, but I did get “police.” Also, because of past experience with my Latin ex-fiancée, Eva, I knew that he’d called the kid a little shit.
Couldn’t blame him.
I held out my hand for the kid. His lips drew a straight line as he glanced left and right, perhaps looking for a better option, wondering if I would lead the procession to the local precinct.
“Are you hurt?”
He brushed himself off, even though he’d landed on cushy luggage. “I’m good,” he said. “Just seeing how fast you are.”
“How old are you?”
“Old enough to drive in Santo Domingo.” Crooked teeth split his face, and he lifted his arms wide, as if laying claim to the entire bustling city.
“Figures.”
“You going to call policía?”
The bellman continued muttering phrases under his breath as he started reassembling his cart.
“Why don’t you help him?”
The kid forced out a breath. “Not my trabajo.”
“Help him.”
Forcing out a breath, the kid picked up the remaining bags and reloaded the cart. The man turned to me and said, “Gracias, señor.”
“De nada.”
I picked up my bag and tried to acquaint myself with the layout of the hotel grounds. Off in the distance, I spotted the aqua ripples and whitecaps of the Caribbean Ocean and started walking in that direction, quickly realizing my foot still hurt.
“Damn driver,” I said to no one.
“You like that bag, don’t you?”
Glancing down, the kid’s bare feet smacked the stained concrete.
“You speak good English.”
“The land of Dominican Republic is filled with many surprises. Welcome to my land,” he said, taking a bow while walking.
“Yeah, thanks.” I stopped in my tracks, holding up my hand so the kid wouldn’t plow into an older couple walking across our path. They both wore wrap-around shades.
“Hip,” the kid said, a smile escaping his face.
“What’s your name?”
“I’ve been a called a lot of things in my life. I was told when I was younger that my parents named me Sebasten.”
I shot him a look. He was playing the sympathy card. I immediately felt my pocket for my money clip.
“Usain Bolt.”
“The fastest man in the world,” the kid said, raising a dramatic arm to the blue sky.
“You’re about as fast as a lightning bolt.” I chuckled once, knowing the joke was on me.
“Tornillo. That’s bolt in Spanish.”
“You must run track in school?”
Shuffling his feet, I could hear them scratch against the hard surface. Callouses. He rested his smallish hands in his pockets, but his fingers poked through. Suddenly, I felt sorry for the little shit who tried to rob me.
“School’s not my thing.”
“You never told me how old you are.”
“Catorce.”
“Fourteen, huh?”
“You know Spanish,” he said.
“Un poco.”
He lifted his chin. “No worries. I know Spanish, English, even a little Italian and French.”
“How did you learn all those languages if you’re not in school?”
“I observe people. I listen to them, mimic them. Helps me understand what they want out of life. Then I know what to sell them.”
I smacked my leg and cracked another chortle. “Bolt, you’re too much. I don’t need to be sold anything.” I craned my neck over the crowd.
Flicking his hand against my shoulder, he said, “You’re looking for someone. A special lady perhaps?” He shot me a wicked grin.
If he only knew how special she was. “Right now, I’m meeting someone at a place called Barra Océano Azul.”
“The Blue Ocean Bar. It’s not easy to find in this huge metropoli.”
“You mean, metropolis?”
“Sí, that. Follow me. I can take you there. Anything you need in Santo Domingo, Seb…I mean, Bolt can get it for you. Anything.”
Bolt wove through the crowd, following an endless maze of paths lined by lush vegetation, water features, and even a few more Bolts looking for patsies like me, it appeared. I’d let the kid stick around a while, but I knew not to turn my back on him.
Typical seaside bar, thatch roof, or so it appeared, a few tables, patrons drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas, all of whom looked like clueless tourists. I glanced at Bolt, suddenly concerned I’d escorted the fox into the hen house. He flipped his longish hair out of his eyes, then stuck his hands back in his pockets. He looked slightly uncomfortable.
My eyes gravitated back to the ocean for a moment. It was calming, allowing me to reflect on why I made the two-thousand-mile trip from Dallas.
To hunt a cold-blooded killer—my ex-girlfriend.
“Are you hoping a beautiful mermaid appears?” Bolt’s hands outlined an hourglass figure.
A flashing image of…her prancing across my condo floor dashed in and back out of my mind.
“There have been stories, that much I can tell you, mister. Lo siento mucho. What is your name?”
“Me llamo Booker.”
“Ahh. Mr. Booker.”
“Nope. Just Booker.”
A clanging bell just over my shoulder. Turning away from the ocean, a bartender swung a small rope, banging the little ball against a cast iron bell that had seen better days. Suddenly, a group of dancers, jugglers, and two men blowing whistles appeared at the end of the path. The patrons jumped from their chairs and started clapping their hands, shaking their hips. The group paraded through the bar area. Bolt smacked my arm, urging me to join in the revelry. I played along and clapped. Bolt nudged me again, pointing out I wasn’t keeping the beat.
That just showed how much my mind had shifted to thinking about…her.
The parade marched away from the bar, and everyone applauded. A second later, I was being scrunched against the bar.
“Was that some type of signal?” I asked Bolt, withholding the urge to thrust my body backward and send three or four guys barreling into another table.
“Happy Hour. That’s how a lot of these tourist hotels and bars show that it’s time for Happy Hour.”
Now I understood the rush of patrons. Pulling my phone from my shorts pocket, it showed straight-up five p.m. local time.
BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6 Page 25
