by Vince Milam
“Of course, you’re right. Are you taking care of Mom?” A hit on the fishing rod and a quick reel-in produced a half-pound croaker.
“Mom and Tinker Juarez.”
Mom had rescued Tinker Juarez from the pound a year ago. CC named him. Mom and I had no clue where she came up with Tinker Juarez, but there it was. A mutt of indeterminate lineage, he fit right in the family, his black and brown smiling face a constant companion of CC’s.
“How is Tinker Juarez?” I tossed the croaker in the fish bucket and re-baited.
“A dog.”
“A good dog?”
“Very good dog. You know.”
“I know.”
“Tinker Juarez had breakfast. He’s happy.”
“Are you happy?”
“Mom makes me happy. Tinker Juarez makes me happy.”
“Good. I want you to be happy.”
“You make me happy. Breakfast makes me happy.”
I laughed while a second croaker hit the bait and soon thereafter landed in the fish bucket. Sufficient for lunch. “I’ll visit you soon. Do you remember the one big thing?”
“That you love me. More than the sun.”
“And?”
“And more than the moon.”
“And?”
“And more than the stars. That’s a lot!”
“And all true, my love. Every bit of it true.”
She handed the phone to Mom, and I let her know of my expected arrival back in the States and when a Charleston stop was likely.
“Love you, honey,” she said. “Be careful, although I know you always are, but it doesn’t stop me from worrying. Can’t wait to see you.”
“Love you too, and I’ll drift your way in a couple of weeks. Kiss CC for me.”
I scanned the horizon for boat traffic and fired the grill. The wheelhouse laptop indicated a message received, and after encryptions and passwords I read, One o’clock.
Jules had replied in her usual succinct manner. The Clubhouse meeting set, I sliced poblano peppers and onions, tossed them into the cast-iron pan with olive oil, and filleted the croakers. Al Green sang “Love and Happiness” through the foredeck speakers, and I moved to the music while cooking. A longing for family and convention tempered the otherwise fine day.
I left Currituck Sound and headed up the North Landing River, part of the Intracoastal network of canals, rivers, and sounds. We plowed a sedate path as barge and boat traffic increased. Two hours later, a cut-through canal had the Ace cruising the Elizabeth River and into Chesapeake, Virginia. The usual tie-up spot, a simple two-boat pier, was empty. With bumpers over the side, I secured my home. Alarms and security measures set, I wandered up the steep hill to the convenience store perched above the small pier and bought a bag of pork rinds. I slid a twenty across the counter to the old man I’d dealt with numerous times before. “Keep the change. And keep an eye on the Ace.” As always, he pocketed the money and nodded.
A run-down section of town greeted me during the six-block walk to the Filipino dry cleaners. A door-handle bell rang as I entered and nodded to the woman behind the counter. She returned a noncommittal stare. Our eyes remained locked. I produced the Glock and placed it on the counter. She covered it with a few unlaundered items. You didn’t bring weapons into the Clubhouse.
A nondescript door to the left of the counter led to dark stairs. They creaked with each step. A small window at the top of the stairs provided the sole light. A door, steel with a simple welded handle, waited. It was one minute after one o’clock.
Two door taps brought an electronic buzz, and the door unlocked with a metallic click. I swung it open and entered to stare down the usual twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.
“Enter my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Close the door, dear.”
I did. Jules sat behind the old wooden desk, both elbows on top. Her left hand held the forward part of the weapon, and her right rested on the trigger. She smiled, cheek pressed against the shotgun’s stock.
“You appear in fine fettle. Turn around, dear.”
A pirouette assured her I wasn’t armed, at least not in a manner allowing quick access.
“Empty your pockets. Still angst-ridden about life, Montague? How be the family?”
“Fine.” Instant alarms. Her reference to my family put a marker on the table—one I didn’t like.
After I emptied my pockets and showed her a money clip and a stack of index cards, Jules signaled with the weapon’s barrel where to sit. The room, windowless, was paneled with sheet steel, the walls devoid of decoration except for an old Casablanca movie poster with Bogart and Bergman. The poster might have hidden something, but I’d never know. An air conditioner hummed, but I couldn’t discern any vents unless they resided under her desk. Two large steel cabinets added to the decor, possible storage for her electronics. A lone overhead naked lightbulb with a pull-chain switch and a small desk lamp provided yellow-hued illumination.
Jules hadn’t changed. An itinerant sheep shearer appeared to have cut her hair, with the band of the eyepatch over her left eye lost amid the tangle. All ten fingers were tipped with small latex covers to prevent the spread of fingerprints. A KA-BAR knife remained embedded in the old wooden desktop. Her ancient abacus awaited transactions.
The wooden chair I occupied squeaked, and she lowered the shotgun, although it remained within quick reach.
“How you doing, Jules?”
“Comme ci, comme ça.” A quick, violent convulsion overtook her. A held-in sneeze and a regular occurrence. I’d never asked her why she didn’t take allergy medication. Too personal. The dangerous downside of her pent-up sneezes manifested with her immediate reaching for weaponry. Just in case the split second of physiological weakness had afforded her guest an opportunity to attack.
“About my family.”
She lowered the shotgun again. Few people knew of Mom and CC’s existence or their whereabouts. Jules’s mention of them staked a flag far out-of-bounds and required elaboration.
She produced a long, thin cigar from a desk drawer and spun one end against the embedded knife blade, trimming the tip. The sealed end of the cigar fell to the desktop, and she fished a kitchen match from her shirt pocket and fired it on the wooden armrest of her chair. Her one eye never left me during the process. She puffed sufficiently to light the cigar and send acrid smoke around her face.
“Simple bonhomie, Case. Do not construe a deeper meaning.”
An insufficient answer, and my silence would trigger further clarification. I liked Jules, as far as it went, but she’d exposed a raw nerve.
“This misunderstood creature before you is but a simple and honest broker of information,” she continued. “That said, I admit to preferences. I prefer you over many others with whom I have dealings. A tender locale within my beating heart.”
She smiled again. It indicated nothing.
“Thanks. I appreciate it. The thing is, I have a price on my head.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“So any information about my family is out-of-bounds. They’re vulnerable.”
“Well put, and acknowledged.” She paused to puff and blow smoke toward the ceiling. I shifted position, the chair creaked, and she continued. “During the course of my career, there have been numerous bits of personal information that will follow me to my grave. Familial connections, in your case, is one of those bits.”
How she knew of Mom and CC would remain her secret, but the reality of her knowledge still sat uneasy. Jules, tough and strange and honest, had plucked a loose thread of danger. Danger to my family.
My silence remained and Jules, to her credit, expressed a rare conversational gambit outside her usual stick-to-business facade. “Allow us to mull this over from a species perspective, dear. Are you familiar with the habits and peculiarities of Sus scrofa domesticus?”
“I’ll take the fifth.”
“Pigs. Domestic pigs. Amazing creatures. I shall pardon your ignorance. Chalk
it up to a failure of your educational experiences. Be that as it may, a somewhat large herd is maintained not far from here by the Filipino community in our little burg.”
“I suppose that’s good news.”
“Indeed! Below us, at this moment, is a hardworking family of Filipinos operating a profitable dry-cleaning establishment.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Then you may also wish to note they pay no rent.” She puffed on the cigar.
“Do tell.”
“A rent-free operation. Due to the fact they occasionally moonlight, as it were, for me—the owner of this building. Indeed, they do.”
“Moonlight.”
“You see, dear. The position you now occupy, situated across from me, is from time to time occupied by someone whose inquiries offend the tender mercies in my less-than-ample breast. In short, they ask the wrong questions.”
“Is this about pigs, Jules?”
She puffed the cigar and sent a thin stream of smoke above our heads.
“Ah. You sit with bated breath. Fair enough. You see, when the wrong person asks the wrong questions, I am forced, through a litany of tortured emotions, to use this.”
She hefted the shotgun with a grim look. “An effective tool, which, most unfortunately, tends to make quite the mess.”
I turned to inspect the steel door and its adjoining steel walls. The telltale smear of lead pellets and small peppered indentations showed in several spots. “I imagine it would be messy.”
“Quite so. On the rare occasion such a little scenario occurs, I request moonlighting expertise from my Filipino compatriots downstairs.”
“A cleaning crew.”
“So to speak. An element of quid pro quo. They arrive with a large stout waterproof bag, a bottle of Clorox, and innumerable rags.” She paused to take another puff and continued. “One can only hope the rags are not remnants of some poor woman’s dropped-off Christian Dior.”
Her chair protested as she leaned back and inspected the ash of the cigar. “Lickety-split—and how I do love that expression for such an activity—the Clubhouse is cleaned, and the offending party removed. Removed where, you might ask?”
“Pigs. The Filipino community.”
“Give this dashing man a gold star! For pigs will consume everything. Bones, toenails—I shall not elaborate further. Suffice it to say, evidence of the offending party is digested.”
“Back to my family.”
“This little narrative has been all about your family, dear. Any knowledge I might have is safe.”
“Safe.”
“You see, anyone asking the wrong questions about the same is simply, well, digested.”
My protective alarms ratcheted down several notches. Jules’s candor was welcomed, but her interest still grated. “I appreciate it. But why me and my family? Why even go there and ask me about them?”
Her body relaxed, draped over the desktop. She placed the cigar on the edge of the desk. The creak of her chair filled the dead silence. Jules’s eye showed, for the first time, true empathy. She addressed me from the heart.
“Some are born with less than full alacrity in the intellectual realm. The wiring, not quite right. Mentally challenged is, I believe, the current vernacular.” She leaned back and held out her hands, palms up. “They are most special. I have personal experience with such matters. And that, Case Lee, is the last we shall ever speak of this.”
Chapter 5
The atmosphere changed to one of connection and comfort. But the jaundiced portion of my personality, combined with past experience, cued a possible Jules strategy to soften my outlook prior to negotiations. A hell of a way to live, and unwelcome.
“Got a gig in Suriname.”
“Yes, you do, dear.” She pulled open a desk drawer and produced a stack of index cards. How Jules knew of my assignment from the Swiss firm Global Resolutions would remain unbroached.
“A coup. Fighting over who knows what, but aluminum concerns rank high,” I said.
“Aluminum concerns.” She plucked her cigar from the desktop and tapped more ash on the floor.
“Several bauxite mines in Suriname.”
“Hmmm.”
“Hop down there, ascertain the landscape, report back. On the surface, a cut-and-dried assignment.” Beneath the surface, something else brewed. I’d been in the business too long not to feel it. Now Jules had copped an attitude, confirming the “something else.”
“A peculiar place,” she said.
She had that right. Formerly Dutch Guiana, it nestled on the northeast corner of South America between British Guiana—now just Guyana—and French Guiana. The official language was Dutch, although most residents of that strange little country also spoke Sranan Tongo—a fusion of English, Dutch, Portuguese, and West African. Hindustani and Javanese were also widely spoken. With half a million residents, Suriname held the distinction of being the smallest South American country. Ninety-five percent of the population lived along the Atlantic coast, the interior wild and jungle-covered.
“Spoken exchange?” I asked. Prior to the brass tacks of index-card information, the Clubhouse offered the option of oral information transfer. The pricing of such, as always, fell to Jules’s discretion.
“Fine.” She laid her index cards down and cast a hard eyeball toward the end of her cigar. A few hard puffs ensured it remained lit.
“Something about this assignment sticks in my craw.” Suriname had a history of revolutions and insurrections. But bauxite mining had continued through it all, uninterrupted. This smelled of something larger than the average coup of the month.
“The economic considerations—the bauxite mines for aluminum production—may not constitute your client’s major concern,” Jules said. Her cigar hand flicked two large black balls among the many on the abacus. The wooden clicks committed a payment, the amount of which I had no clue. Jules would let me know the bill at the end of our talk.
“How so?”
“Geopolitics. Establishment of a presence in South America.” A single black ball scooted down one of the abacus’s wooden posts.
“Chinese? Russian? Middle Eastern? Drug cartels?” The FBI had recently busted the son of Suriname’s current president-for-life and convicted him of offering material support to Hezbollah. His offer to help them establish a permanent base in Suriname demonstrated the wild nature of my destination. I wished my clients, the gnomes of Zurich, would offer assignments to more tranquil parts of the world.
“Undetermined.” The abacus remained quiet. She didn’t charge for murky answers.
Jules’s oral information was gold. To spin my wheels focused on economic aspects—bauxite mining—would mean wasted effort. Good to know. But geopolitical intrigue had a downside. It increased the challenge of information collection. And it damn sure increased the danger factor.
“All right. Let’s talk players.” The time had come to spill some of those brass tacks.
She lifted the deck of index cards at my statement and popped them once on the desktop as a fresh deck of cards.
“Clandestine players?” she asked.
It wouldn’t hurt to know the CIA element stationed in Suriname, so I nodded. She flipped through her cards, produced one, and slid it across the table. Two balls clicked on the abacus. The name—Fletcher Hines—didn’t ring a bell. His official title was agricultural liaison for the US embassy. What crap. Couldn’t they come up with something a little more inventive than agricultural liaison?
“Special interests?” If available, Jules would provide any personal insights such as sexual tendencies, drug addictions, etc.
“None.” The abacus remained silent. So this Fletcher Hines was a straight shooter. He’d be less than enthused at my presence on his dance floor.
“Dutch,” I said. Knowledge of any key players with strong Dutch ties and therefore deep knowledge of local history and current events would make for a legitimate anchor point. Jules slid another index card across the desk, and I
digested the information. The abacus clicked.
“No special interests,” she said preemptively.
“Suriname government or military,” I said.
“Little or no difference between the two,” Jules stated, slid another card, and waited for the inevitable.
“Special interests?”
“Cocaine.” The abacus clicked. “He likes money to pay for his habit.”
Nothing unusual about a government functionary with a drug habit, although it made for distasteful exchanges. But I’d travel with a large wad of American dollars, and Global Resolutions always reimbursed me for such expenses. Still, slime-covered stuff.
“Out-of-country insertions.” Foreign spy networks and associated players provided sound informational footing prior to entering an operational theater. I would have been surprised if Jules didn’t know of these assets.
“One of ours. A merc.” She slid the card, I digested the name, the abacus clicked. I riffled through my mental Rolodex, remembered this guy. An American mercenary by the name of Bishop. Have helicopter, will travel.
“Others?”
“Rumors.”
“I’ll take it.”
“A woman. Unknown origin. Unknown paymaster. Nothing concrete.” The abacus remained silent. The well showed dry on that front, so I moved to more personal matters.
“Firearm.” There was little point smuggling a weapon into most foreign countries. Local black markets offered a wide selection of weaponry.
“Heavy or light?” Jules asked.
“Light.” A semiautomatic pistol would suffice for my endeavors.
She slid another card across the table, clacked a couple of abacus balls, puffed her cigar. I memorized the information on the cards she’d handed me. I wasn’t going to leave with them. None of Jules’s hard-copy information left the Clubhouse, ever. Sixty seconds later, the information absorbed, her cards were returned. She collected them, added them to her stack, and placed the deck back in a desk drawer.
“Let’s talk about what you’ve brought me, dear.”
It was time to provide discounts to the cost of my information bill. “Yemeni arms trader.”
She wafted a dismissive hand. A bit of a surprise given the hotbed of activity in that part of the world, but she may well have been inundated with such information.
