Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  Judi came through to open the door and made a remark Clint didn’t hear. They both laughed.

  Clint went inside to put on a bathing suit and tank top. He loaded some stuff into his boat and went to Judi’s dock to pick her up. Ben would be back with his stuff and maybe a friend in a few minutes. Judi was in a bathing suit that showed off her excellent slim figure. Clint leered and they both laughed. There would never be anything more than this. They both knew it would eventually ruin a close and real friendship if sex got involved.

  Clint had a cup of coffee while they waited and they chatted about their friends. Ben came with a rather handsome surfer he called Jon and made a joke about maybe leaving him there because Clint would get horny with Judi looking like that and they had already agreed no sex to ruin things – and he hadn’t made any such rash promises!

  They set out south, then east toward the end of Isla Bastimentos. As they passed the island Clint called to the girls who worked at the restaurante there. They waved. Jon asked if the islands were directly ahead or more toward the mainland and where was this Gaita place?

  “Paradise is that way,” Judi answered, pointing westward toward Dolfin Point. “The Zap’s are directly ahead and a bit toward the Caribbean, that way.” She pointed southwest.

  Clint said they’d go to the islands and work in toward Gaita’s around noon. Maybe they could con him into a bit of gourmet food!

  A big cigarette boat came by at tremendous speed. There were several very dark people in it. It maneuvered around a couple of the small reef-lined islands and went out into the open Caribbean. A helicopter came by. A police helicopter with machine guns. They heard the gunfire a minute later from out in the Caribbean.

  “Paradise is definitely not THAT way!” Ben declared.

  Clint noticed that Jon looked like he would faint. He filed that look and the questions it brought to mind.

  “There was a girl tied up in the boat. I’m afraid she was dead along with the drug-runners,” Cpt. Ramirez stated. “We are presently trying to identify her and to determine why she was there. It is possible she was the person who reported the drugs on the boat. There was half a ton of processed cocaine aboard that boat. It is very sad. Further information will be made public immediately when we have it.”

  This was in Spanish, of course, and was on the radio. It was just past noon and they had arrived at Gaita’s just moments before. Gaita wasn’t there, but Dave was. He said he noticed the boat and helicopter going by about 8:30 and heard the shots. Ben shook his head and said they never learned. Judi wondered about the dead girl. Jon looked sick. Clint merely observed everything. He used his radio on the boat to contact the police in Bocas. He worked with them at times, so they would tell him what they knew.

  “The girl was shot with a very small caliber bullet,” Ernesto replied. “It wasn’t from the fifty caliber police guns – which is a great relief to us. Her name was Sherri Bills, a surfer girl from Alabama in the states. I believe she was the one who reported the drugs and they found out about it. When the police came after them out there they shot her to be sure she couldn’t testify to anything if they survived.”

  “Where was she in the boat?” Clint asked. There was a pause while Ernesto looked over the reports, then, “On the deck by the engine compartment.”

  “She was killed to prevent her telling something else she knew,” Clint said. “They knew they were all dead. You can’t survive in a boat that’s in the sights of a fifty caliber machine gun.

  “Thanks. I’ll probably ask about it when we get back this afternoon.”

  “What do you think she knew?”

  “Who they were there to meet, probably.”

  Dave fixed them some of his curried pork. They talked awhile, then went back though the islands to Bocas at four o’clock.

  “What will you do tonight?” Judi asked as they got off the boat at her dock. “I’m meeting Kent, the knockout guy from Canada, for dinner at Refugios.”

  “I’ll probably just hang,” Ben said. “Not too much to do this time of the year.”

  “I’ll check on some things here,” Clint answered. “Probably go to the Plank or Bongos later. Maybe Bohmfalk’s. El Parche is playing there tonight. They’re good.”

  They looked at Jon, who said he’d done too much or had too much sun or something so would sack out awhile at the hostel. Maybe he’d go to the Mondo Taitu later.

  Clint unloaded the boat, went over to his dock to tie the boat down and unload his stuff, then went in to contact his friend, Manny (actually Marko, a friend who was a big jefe in the mafia. He had moved there to get away from that and was popular here. He wanted to raise his family without the stigma of what pops used to be into). Manny would find out about a few things for him in minutes when it would take the police information system a week to find the same thing.

  An hour later Manny called back. “This Jon Derek is actually Morrie Amsberg from South Philly. He’s a sort of wannabe dealer with some connections that could maybe make it happen. His girlfriend didn’t – note that – have a clue. Maybe she found a clue or two?”

  “I’d say ... she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got half the story – then got dead. If it weren’t for that I’d let the locals handle it. You know how I get when the innocent bystanders get drawn into these things. This time the bystander got dead. That can’t pass. Thanks, Manny.”

  “I can solve this in a minute. I know you don’t want that, but I promise you that crud isn’t getting away with it. If you can’t tag his ass solid I’ll handle it and you won’t even know about it. Time limit for you?”

  “Two days.”

  “Done!”

  Clint went into the shower, shaved, dressed and walked into town to chat with people. Fernando, local translator for the English speaking tourists, was at Don Chicho’s and had heard about the drug bust. They talked awhile.

  Clint went down to the Big Bamboo for a beer. Judi came in after half an hour to say she’d been stood up. It seemed Kent had an emergency call and had taken off for Panamá City on the last plane. He’d paid Lorris, the older guy from France who lived out on Avenida G, fifty bucks extra to get his seat and to tell Judi he was sorry to miss her.

  Clint and Judi went to a couple of places, then headed for home. Clint asked Judi for Kent’s last name.

  “It was Downton. He’s from English stock.”

  After seeing her home Clint called Manny and asked that he find out what he could about a Kent Downton from Canada.

  “Nothing about this Kent character. He’s just some schnook with a little cash and a big debt to several banks. Mortgage, car payments and such crap. Supposed to be here to make some kind of deal for land where he’d be able to pay everything off in a month or so.

  “So he’s the link? Morrie – by the way, he got his name changed legally, so I should call him Jon – gets the stuff and he carries it somehow. Pays by taking a loan on his house and car for about four hunnert grand – hundred thousand dollars. I keep slipping.

  “How to deliver to Canada? Find that part and you’ve got it tied.”

  “Thanks, Manny,” Clint said, thinking. “There’s a piece missing here.”

  “There is?”

  “Why were the drugs on that boat?”

  “Delivery here?”

  “Hmm. If the girl had time to learn about it and report it, probably not. You know what?

  “Manny, did the range of that boat reach the states? Who were those ... the policia can tell me that, I suppose. This might get interesting! WHERE were those drugs going? See where Kent books from Panamá. I’ll do that.

  “Manny, there’s no way the stuff was going directly to the states or Canada! It just doesn’t fit! How long were those ... I’ve got to check on a thing or two. This just might get veddy inderesdink!”

  They chatted a minute, then Clint called Ernesto to ask the range of the boat – and how long the crew were there and where they stayed.

  “Fairly good ran
ge, but not to the states, like you wanted to know,” Ernesto answered. “They’d been here three days and the stuff was NOT on the boat when it got here and was NOT on that boat yesterday. It went to Carenero for twenty minutes yesterday afternoon, to the marina, and tied to a boat there. Their names were Manuel and Paulo Garcia and Raul and Donaldo Sanchez. Cubans from Miami. They stayed at the Bahia.”

  “Thanks. Anything else about them?”

  “How about, they paid in Euros?”

  “Veddy indersdink!”

  Clint called Manny again. Manny’s first words were, “Manuel and Paulo Garcia and Don and Raul Sanchez, Miami Cubans, Bahia, Euros. Kent is booked to Curacao. Hi, Clint.”

  “Thanks. Whose boat did they tie to yesterday at the Carenero marina?”

  “Hmm? Gimme a sec.”

  There was a long pause, then, “Gilded Lillypad, Frank Beaumont, Paris, there for four days, leave tomorrow. Fifty two footer, sail and diesel. Rations for a month.”

  “Can you find out where they’re going to be at the end of that month?”

  “Yeah. Your two day limit is extended. I think I like the detective bit. Makes you think.

  “It’s a new delivery system. How does it work?”

  “They get the stuff at Curacao and deliver it here somehow – Beaumont – where it’s put on a boat and taken to somewhere where it’s put on another boat. That boat then goes to just outside of the checkpoints near France. The boat from here takes a leisurely route back, goes through the checkpoints and is clean as a whistle, meets the contact with the crap and offloads it AFTER going through all the checkpoints. The delivery boat then goes through the checkpoints because turning around and going somewhere else is suspicious. THEY’RE clean by then. You get one through several checkpoints then get another to deliver – which gets through the checkpoints after it’s unloaded to another one that does the same. Never a suspicion in the future. They’ve probably already made three or four dry runs. We’re gonna put and end to one of them!”

  Manny giggled. “This is sort of fun. Figuring the run from the other end. Maybe the kids can say their papa was a crime FIGHTER and not a syndicate don! Something to be proud of.

  “I can’t believe how I’m all of a sudden turning into a pillar of the community!”

  “Sort of makes you feel a lot better about yourself, hunh?”

  “The truth? It really DOES! Ain’t that wild?!”

  “See the attraction?”

  “Yup! I do see one problem.”

  “What?”

  “They ain’t got no shit to deliver now.”

  “Crap!”

  “Maybe we can get them a new supply? I got contacts. Not so much, but enough to make them think it can still work and they don’t end up running from the ones who financed this one and, shall we say, got defaulted on.”

  “I don’t want to be any part of drug trade, but there, as you would say, ain’t no other way. Go for it!”

  “Clint Faraday? I’m Jerry Brown – and no jokes. I work for Marko. He said to set something up where you can do a sting on some people in Europe.” Jerry Brown was a man in his fifties, in good physical condition and reminded Clint of Dean Martin for some reason.

  “Something like that. What do I do?”

  “There’s a nice yacht that’s going to France. You are invited along with some friends. There will be nothing on the boat, but you can be there for the end of the deal. Manny Mathews from here will go along with his wife. Marko says the guy’s somebody he respects.”

  “Oh? You deal with Marko directly, I imagine,” Clint said, confused about what Marko was doing.

  “I’ve never met him. We had some rivals in the business back in the states and he knew about me from his father. I wasn’t in California much. He says it was his father who was a close friend of yours. You saved his ass a time or two or something such. Old Joe told me personally that anything you wanted it was the same as if he said it himself. That extends to his kids and grandkids. No owed debt because he could never repay what you’d done for him.”

  “I’ve never really understood what it was I saved him from, but I did like Joe. I like Marko. When do we sail?”

  “Whenever you or Manny say.” Clint nodded and went to ask Judi if she’d like a trip to France on a yacht. She would. Clint then asked Ben if he wanted to go. He did.

  That may have been a mistake – but Ben had always been a good friend, so it should work out. They would leave at one the following day. Manny and Sylvia were already aboard. When Frank was where he could hear Manny said, “Maybe we can run into the med and see Marko!

  “I guess not. He doesn’t want anyone to know where he is.”

  “I’d heard he was on some Greek island or something,” Frank replied. “We can go by close and maybe see him. I’d like to meet him face-to-face.”

  “I don’t know which island,” Manny said.

  They left on schedule. Ben was a hit with two of the crew – which tickled Manny. Frank seemed a bit stand-offish to Ben at first, but soon became a friend. This wasn’t the states. It’s much more open.

  The Mediterranean was a sparkling clear aqua with a few fleecy clouds going by. The yacht pulled in to the docks in Greece for refueling, then spent a few days touring among the islands, theoretically hoping to see Markos or evidence of him. After a day Manny suggested that Marko would most probably have a GPS system aboard so he would know where the yacht was at any time. Frank slapped his head and said all he ever overlooked was the obvious. They headed for France when the report that the boat was getting close came in.

  The boat tied up close to another a distance out. The other one had just come outward and was heading toward the islands. The stop was only for about half an hour. Nothing was obvious from the distance, but the good binoculars showed four men in scuba gear going over the side with packages to return for another trip. The other boat proceeded along, the delivery boat stayed another half hour then went to the checkpoint and on in.

  When the local boat came back they were close to the checkpoint when a gunboat came alongside and directed them to go to the checkpoint. The police were carrying a transmitter and they heard when the people on the boat were told that a police helicopter noted them stopped earlier, so a check was routine.

  “We always stop for awhile before going to the islands!” a woman on the boat cried. “This is outrageous! You know us – we’re here all the time! This is outrageous!”

  “We have to check if there is another craft very close,” the policeman replied. “It will only take a moment.”

  A minute later as the other police were climbing aboard the woman said they had to be back in only twenty more minutes for a business appointment. She would give him a hundred Euros to let them go because the appointment was very important.

  “This will only take a moment, but the offer of a bribe makes me very suspicious,” the officer replied stiffly. “For your information, offering a policeman a bribe is felonious behavior. See it doesn’t happen again!”

  He called for the others to be most careful in checking out that boat.

  As soon as the officers were below deck the dingy was dropped and two people got in it. They started out when an officer aboard the gunboat announced they were in the sights of his machine gun and would be shot if they proceeded one centimeter more. They started the motor and headed out full throttle. The officer laid a line of fire just ahead of them. They refused to stop, so he shot the motor, hitting the man running it and stopping the boat. The other sat with his head in his hands as the gunboat came alongside and ordered them aboard. There were several large packages stowed under the seats of the dingy.

  “So!” the officer snapped, then called that the officers aboard the craft being searched were to arrest everyone aboard and proceed immediately with the boat that was now the property of France to the police docks. The yacht went to the docks where Clint and Manny were given complete reports that would allow them to cause the arrests of everyone not in Pana
má as well as those still in Panamá.

  Frank suggested that the Mediterranean was a paradise. Marko would certainly not object if they spent a few days there.

  “Paradise is that way!” Judi declared positively, pointing to the west.

  What If...?

  Clint Faraday looked back across the forest below at the Caribbean islands and the sea.

  It was a long way to them. He was on a mountaintop at the highest part of the range. He turned around and looked over the clouds below at the Pacific, which was a low streak in the couple of places he could see through breaks in the clouds.

  He was with an Indio friend who had a place on the top of the mountain. It was a picturesque one room house with a palm frond roof and a gravel floor.

  He waved to the natives who came up with them as they went toward the trail back down. It took four hours to walk up to the spot, but was well worth the time and trouble. Clint had never before been in such a magnificent place! It was at about 5,500 feet, but the view was panoramic, mountains and lush valleys to two sides, the valleys going to the Pacific on one side, and the valleys going to the Caribbean on the other.

  It was as peaceful a place as he had ever been, too. The Indios in the mountains were beautiful people, very amiable and very curious. They worked for 12 to 14 hours every day of their lives and had the sculpted muscular bodies that resulted. Clint would have killed to have a body like the normal mountain Indio when he was a bit younger.

  When he first came to Panamá he wondered at why things were done in certain ways. They seemed almost stupid to a gringo from the cities of the US, but he knew there were reasons for things that were not so obvious to anyone from another culture. He found the Indios were among the most intelligent people he had met before, though nothing held true for all people in any group.