BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6

by John W. Mefford

  “Juan.” The round man entered the room. “You have a visitor. Should I tell them to come back?”

  “This must be about the money,” Juan said, lifting from the chair. “Please excuse me for a brief minute. This is important.”

  He brushed by my chair so fast a breeze blew against my face. As his boots clopped off the hollow floors behind me, he left a wake of awkward silence in the library.

  “He’s meeting with his banker, although we’re not sure if that will make a difference,” she said, draining her glass and setting it on the coffee table.

  “How much is the ransom?”

  “There isn’t one, at least not yet.”

  A dryness hit the back of my throat, the same I’d felt countless times before when I had sensed the worse outcome for the victim. And there was no worse crime than one committed against a kid.

  “Have the kidnappers contacted Juan?” I realized I was leaning forward, my forearms planted on my knees.

  Licking her lips, her eyes narrowed a bit. She glanced over my shoulder.

  “Look, we don’t have much time.”

  Her accent had evaporated.

  “Britney?”

  “I don’t go by that name any more. Like I said, we don’t have much time.”

  My pulse thumped my neck, but I didn’t move a muscle.

  “What did you do to yourself?”

  “I can’t talk about that now. Later. Maybe.”

  I could taste blood inside my mouth. I’d begun my chewing routine.

  “Juan doesn’t know who you are.”

  “He knows I love him. That’s all that matters.”

  I couldn’t help but shake my head. “How do you know what love is?”

  “Booker, please. This isn’t the time.” She held out her hands as tears bubbled in her eyes.

  I’d seen the act before.

  “Is any of this real?”

  “What? Of course. You know Juan Ortiz. He’s an authentic person. We had a great life together, until his son was abducted. You can’t fake that.”

  My mind was spinning, the Britney/Ana Sofia riddle now solved. Sort of.

  “So what is all this about? Did you purposely lure me here?”

  She nodded, again glancing over my shoulder while toying with her ear lobe. I noticed her hand free of any ring.

  “To do what exactly?”

  “Find Esteban and rescue him. That’s all I want. That’s all Juan wants. To get his boy back. I figured if anyone could understand the love of a child, it was you. I know you’d fight the greatest army in the world to save Samantha.”

  She knew she was hitting my soft spot. It was working, but I couldn’t forget what she’d done.

  “You killed at least three people. You should be in prison.”

  “Listen. Do you think I would have gotten you to Santo Domingo thinking we wouldn’t have to deal with my past? I know I can’t avoid it. But I had to reach out to you…for Juan.”

  A single tear rolled down her tanned face.

  It felt like a torch had been lit against my head. I resumed popping my fingers against each other, my eyes trying to penetrate the real person sitting five feet from me.

  “You never answered my question.”

  She closed her eyes for a brief moment, a tiny line forming between her eyes. I’d never once seen a line on her face. But I’d also never seen her so stressed.

  “My head is spinning. What did you ask?” She picked up her wine glass, saw that it was empty, then quickly walked to the bar and poured another glass.

  Once she turned to face me again, I said, “Have the kidnappers contacted Juan?”

  “Yes, but not directly. They’ve contacted me just once.”

  “You! Why you?”

  She held out her hand. “Please, we need to keep this quiet.”

  “Your fiancé doesn’t know you’ve spoken to the kidnappers?” I dialed back my volume, but not my intensity.

  “Yes.” She held up a finger, then kicked back a huge gulp of red wine. “Do you really think I would keep that from him?”

  My face drew a blank stare. “Juan doesn’t know what you’re capable of. I do. It’s a logical question.”

  “Fine. I’ll appease you. Juan knows they called me. I shared everything with him, and we made the decision together to contact you. He would never turn his back on me. We’re a team.”

  She’d tried to poke my guilt button. Not a chance that was happening.

  “I’m assuming you didn’t tell him the method in which you got me here?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “I’ve shared a great deal with Juan, and he with me. But we all have a past, don’t we?” She returned the raised eyebrow, then sipped her wine while kicking her crossed leg.

  “So you want me to find the kidnapper, rescue Esteban and bring him home…in a country I know nothing about?”

  “You are resourceful and shrewd, and you understand the world is made up of many types of people,” she said. “Booker, don’t you realize how much notoriety you’ve received for solving the cases you have since you started your PI business? It truly is remarkable.”

  Now was she trying a different approach, stroking my ego. I let the thought end there.

  “But I let one get away,” I said, pursing my lips.

  The sound of boots bounced off the hall walls. Juan was seconds away from entering the room.

  “Please, do we have a deal?” she asked, her eyes, shifting between the doorway and me.

  “I want to help find the kid. But where’s the deal part?”

  She closed her eyes. “I will never marry Juan, that much I know. After you return Esteban, I will not fight extradition. I will accompany you back to Dallas and deal with the repercussions of my actions. That is my promise.”

  I tried to run through my negotiation options. There weren’t many, especially with Britney living behind a fortress. By running a school that appeared to have such a positive impact on the kids, she’d succeeded in weaving herself into the fabric of the community. If I had no leverage, she could drag out the extradition process for years, giving her time to find her next Sugar Daddy.

  “You for the kid,” I said.

  Looking me straight in the eye, she said, “You have my word.”

  “Sorry about the delay,” Juan said while brushing by me.

  “Not a problem.”

  “Has Ana Sofia helped you understand how important Esteban is to us?” Juan’s voice cracked just as his back hit the sofa.

  Pausing, I could see his emotions swell once again. The correlation to my Samantha was obvious. For a brief moment, however, my thoughts turned to when I was teenager and my dad was AWOL. It didn’t take two hands to count the number of times I recalled seeing him in my life, at the time I received my football scholarship to the University of Texas, and he made a cameo at high school graduation. And once, he took me to the park—I was just a little tike—and the entire time I played on the jungle gyms, he just sat off to the side on a bench, preoccupied with something he was reading.

  His absence was a defining pillar of my life. I knew I had to be a better father than dear old dad. I became wired to set my adversities aside, even use his absence as a motivation at times. While I’d told myself he wasn’t worth a two-second thought, let alone my love, deep inside I could feel an emptiness, as if my experiences were missing a key…pillar.

  I nodded. “We’ve come to a mutual agreement on the terms of my work. That’s the business part.” I scooted the edge of my chair. “I understand this is your worst nightmare come true. I’m sure your head is spinning, you can’t sleep, and you forget to breathe sometimes.”

  He brought his hands to his chin, swallowing back a round of tears.

  “I’m going to ask you questions. Some will be normal. Others might sound irrelevant. But I need to know you’ll be completely transparent.”

  He shot a confused look at Britney—his perfect little Ana Sofia. “Mr. Booker is just asking for us to tell hi
m the complete truth. That will not be a problem,” she said turning to me, the Spanish lilt in her voice magically flipped back on.

  “Of course. We are an open book. Anything to bring Esteban home,” Juan said.

  And Britney to justice.

  7

  I needed the cover of night, that much I knew. Otherwise, I felt like a high school freshman thrust into the starting quarterback job for the Dallas Cowboys—unprepared to the point that I couldn’t even predict the worst outcome.

  Check that. The most brutal hit I took playing football two years into college resulted in a dislocated shoulder. I’d also suffered at least two concussions, a broken finger, and had my kidney bruised during my athletic tenure.

  Tonight’s operation had a better than even chance of me ending up eating lead for dinner.

  Resting an arm on my backpack in the tiny backseat of a twelve-year-old Mini Cooper, the car’s undercarriage slammed into a pothole, jarring the countless boxes of restaurant glasses stacked in the front passenger seat and next to me in the back. I’d questioned this method of transportation the moment I laid eyes on the car when the driver, Manuel, a fifty-something restaurant supply delivery man, had pulled the two-tone low-rider into the alley behind Valdez’s favorite Santo Domingo eatery. A second cousin to Valdez’s wife, Manuel had been arrested three months earlier for distributing what sounded like the Dominican version of moonshine. Valdez called in a favor and had the charges dropped, only because Manuel promised to walk the straight and narrow while also agreeing to any additional task Valdez asked of him.

  “He owes me one. There will be no problems with him maintaining absolute secrecy about your trip outside of the city,” Valdez had said a couple of hours ago, as a purple dusk gave way to a nighttime sky filled with glowing stars.

  Given Manuel’s moonshine background, I was half expecting to see a 1969 orange Dodge Charger fishtail into the alley, carom off a couple of barrels and take the car up on two wheels, then come to a screeching halt— à la the General Lee.

  “What the hell kind of car is this?” Bolt brought both hands to the top of his head. “It looks like something out of a circus.”

  Manuel unfolded his lanky body from the front seat and leaned on the roof.

  “Are there ten clowns inside too?” Bolt asked, maintaining a straight face while glaring through the windows.

  “El mejor paseo en toda la República Dominicana. No hay tarea demasiado grande para el Mini. Todo terreno, todo el tiempo, todo el tiempo.” The man dressed in all white kissed the top of his car, releasing a snaggle-toothed smile that made me think he’d never seen a dentist.

  “He thinks his car is the bomb.” Bolt rolled his eyes and thrust his hands apart, as if he were Lebron creating a mushroom of dust before the start of a game.

  Without wanting to risk my life and the secrecy of my mission, I ultimately opted to avoid the multitude of alternatives in the Santo Domingo taxi services. I’d just have to eat my knees for the duration of the one-hour drive.

  Manuel used two hands to shut my car door, cramming my shoulders against the stack of boxes to my right. Once he crawled into the front seat, he said, “I know roads like back of my foot. I can get you there with no lights on carro, if that is what you hope.”

  His English was choppy, but I got the gist of what he was saying. “I just want to get there in one piece, without anyone stopping us and asking us where we are going. Do you think we can accomplish that?”

  “No hay problema,” he said, showing off his grill through the rearview.

  Tapping my backpack, I tried to picture how a routine traffic stop might play out. Cops would ask why I was dressed like a mime and then, without cause, search my bag. That’s when the reaction would turn volatile. Guns would be drawn and adrenaline would flow like a flooded Rio Ozama, leading to a jittery barrel flashing in my face.

  The cops on the scene would shout into their shoulder radios, spitting out dramatic descriptions of a foreign terrorist with a bag full of weapons. Backup officers would be called, superiors would get on the horn and bark out more orders. And that’s if I just sat there and didn’t move. If I dared to attempt an explanation—which, admittedly, would be a bold-faced lie—they’d likely consider me a hostile perpetrator, and within their interpretation of the law they would have the right and authority to use any physical means possible to subdue me.

  In other words, they’d probably beat the shit out of me. And if I were them, I’d probably be just as skittish…minus the unsolicited police brutality piece.

  A quick image of what a Dominican jail cell might look and smell like shot into my head. Pigs in slop might have better conditions. And I’d be rolling around in there with them.

  Adjusting my knees a good half-inch, I tried to live in the moment, not get too caught up in what could go wrong. Frankly, injecting law enforcement into this operation wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.

  There. I found my happy spot.

  I hadn’t seen anything more than a distant house light in the last twenty minutes, about the time pavement had turned into dusty red clay. The Mini’s tires crunched across tiny pebbles, the sound of glass being put through a meat grinder. While my entire body felt every little bump and piece of gravel, it seemed that Manuel wasn’t hell bent on putting our lives at risk, allowing me an opportunity to quickly replay the whirlwind from the last twenty-four hours.

  <><><>

  Swearing Valdez and Bolt to secrecy, I shared my entire conversation with Juan and Ana Sofia, who turned out to be Britney. Even with Valdez and Bolt, I knew I was taking a chance. Were they part of the masquerade to land me in Britney and Juan’s compound? While they’d known I had my doubts about Ana Sofia’s legitimacy, they appeared genuinely shocked when I recounted how Ana Sofia had flipped a switch and turned into Britney at first opportunity.

  I convinced myself that running into Bolt was no more planned than getting in that defective taxi at the airport. It was sheer luck. As for Valdez, it was difficult to completely dismiss the notion of his involvement. Having lost his job recently, he needed the money. He was the one who had gotten word back to the states. But he appeared to be harmless, nothing more than a conduit for Father Santiago, who had forged some type of relationship with Ana Sofia. For right now, the Father was on the outside of my Dominican inner circle.

  Knowing we had less than no time—I’d told Juan and his Ana Sofia that Esteban’s fifteen-day disappearance lowered the odds of him returning safely to a single-digit percentage—I met Valdez and Bolt after I left the Ortiz compound at a small café near the brownstone just east of Rio Ozama.

  While I offered to pay them a fee for any help they provided, each said they would have done the same without compensation. With two daughters of his own, Valdez said, “As a father, my greatest fear is someone taking our kids. With all of his money, many people think Juan has everything he wants. Well, he only had a bigger target on him and his family. I can’t imagine what he’s going through.”

  Bolt seemed a bit more reflective. “For someone like me, I idolized Juan Ortiz, not just because he was a legendary baseball player who made millions of dollars playing for the New York Yankees, but because he is a father to a boy who is my age. I dreamed of having a father just like him, the same athletic build. A man who commands respect. I want the kid, Esteban, to be able to go home to his father.”

  Speaking in hushed tones under a fluorescent light that blinked every few seconds, the three of us plotted our next move.

  “Unfortunately, kidnapping has become all too common in Latin America, as a form of intimidation as well as securing a large payout, many times helping bankroll illegal drug operations. I’ve seen it happen occasionally here in the Caribbean,” Valdez said, sipping a can of Coke. “But given how you described Britney’s interaction with the people who have Esteban, authorities may not be aware of every kidnapping.”

  The waitress set down plates of arepa in front of each of us, a sweet desser
t made with cornmeal and coconut cake. I glanced over my shoulder, ensuring she was out of eavesdropping range. “There is something strange about this kidnapping. In her one conversation with the kidnappers, Britney said they never demanded any money.”

  “Did they not ask for anything?” Valdez rubbed his thick mustache.

  “According to Britney, they only said they would hold Esteban until they got what they wanted and that they would be in touch.”

  “Did Britney or Juan have any idea what they were referring to?”

  “No. At least they said they didn’t.”

  “You don’t think they’re telling you everything?”

  I paused for a second, a fork of arepa halfway to my mouth. “Britney would lie, cheat, steal, and kill to eat her next meal. Thankfully, Juan isn’t from the same gene pool.”

  “Pool? Swimming pool?” Bolt asked, flakes of cake spilling off his lips.

  “Sorry, I should have said it’s good they aren’t related.”

  Bolt cocked his head, curious. “That would be illegal, no?”

  “Ignore my use of American phrases. Let’s just say that Juan seemed completely distraught. I think he would do anything to save his kid. And it appears he doesn’t have any other options than for me—now us—to rescue Esteban.”

  Valdez removed his black-rimmed glasses and rubbed a thin layer of condensation off the lenses. Even late in the evening, I could feel a line of sweat tickle down my back. Humidity was a constant companion in the Dominican.

  I set down my fork, then took a drink from my bottled water.

  “To kidnap the son of a local legend, that would take some balls,” I said without thinking.

  “Grandes testículos,” Bolt said, a smile on his face.

  Valdez glanced at the teen and shook his head, perhaps hoping he’d be able to keep his daughters away from the likes of the kid with a lightning-quick brain…and feet.

  “Mr. Booker, you are right. That is where we should start. Who would not flinch when plotting such a crime? Let me think a moment.” He pulled out his phone and thumbed through pictures and contacts.

  A few minutes passed, and we all finished our arepa.