The Paradise Key (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 5)

by Nick Thacker

  I told myself Joey would find it — he knew to look for it — and focused again on the woman who had stolen my evening.

  She asked about the way they were, the marks. If they were smart about it at all, or if they fit their stereotype and were driven by something other than the head perched on top of their neck. I laughed and told her that stereotypes were there for a reason, and you could tell by what they drank.

  The idiot marks always drank something out of their league. They never really understood what they were drinking, they’d just seen someone — their father, their older brother, that ‘cool’ friend they wanted to be — order it and pretend to like it.

  Micheladas, dry martinis, Jack and Cokes, these all fit the bill. Most guys had no idea why these were their drink choices, they had just always sidled up and ordered them. Sometimes it would be disguised a bit, like Bond’s own ‘shaken, not stirred’ style. Wrong, but he liked it that way. He was fictitious, too, so it’s hard to fault the guy.

  I always figured that the first rule of not following the rules is you have to know why you’re not following the rules. The marks never knew why they ordered things the way they did, and that’s always the easiest tell.

  I thought about the mark tonight, the one Joey was taking care of. He’d ordered scotch, but he had been hesitant about it. Not in a way that meant he was drinking above his pay grade, but in a way that led me to believe he was just doing it because he thought it was the right thing to do.

  “What did you think of that guy?” I asked.

  “The… dead guy?”

  “Well, yeah. Before he was dead.” I am admittedly bad at making small talk, but I really had no other option at this point. “I mean, did he have any reason to kill you?”

  She looked at me strangely. “You do realize that normal people don’t talk like that, right?”

  “I guess… yeah, sorry. Did you have any enemies? Anyone who might want you…” I stopped.

  “Every sentence has the word ‘dead’ in it.”

  “I’m not trying to —“

  “I know. Still…”

  “Sorry. Anyway, you didn’t recognize him?”

  “Never seen him before in my life.”

  This was a typical answer, actually. The marks we dealt with in my line of work were the kinds who preyed on women they’d never seen before. Something about the unfamiliarity of it all made them think they could get away with it, I guess. I wasn’t surprised she had never seen him, but I wanted to make sure I did my due diligence.

  “You don’t think he was a friend of your —“

  “My brother doesn’t really have friends.”

  I filed this statement away for later. If she was telling the truth, then her brother was something of an enigma. Everyone has friends, or at least people who know you well enough they’d call you a friend. Her brother, while obviously distraught after the death or murder of his old man, was still somewhat of a loner. He had barely spoken to me, and when I’d gone out to find them, he was holed up in the restroom while his sister was outside on the phone.

  “Your brother’s married,” I said, a bit abruptly.

  She nodded.

  “His wife?”

  I wasn’t sure what the question was, but I figured that any answer I got would be good enough for some information.

  “His wife… what?”

  Okay, I thought. Maybe not. I changed tactics. “His wife is… they’re still married?”

  She nodded. “Unhappily, in my opinion. She’s a loose cannon, seems to be one of those that’s in it for the money. None of us ever really liked her, but she’s nice enough, most of the time. No kids, but they keep talking about it like we should all care.” She made a face that implied she didn’t really care much about when she might become an aunt, but I didn’t press into it. “He’s a bit ‘out there,’ as you’ve probably already gathered, but he’s a good man. He’s always been interested in making sure we — our family — are taken care of.”

  “Tell me about your old man.”

  “My father?”

  I nodded, pouring some more whiskey into my glass. It was a diluted old fashioned now, the components all out of whack and hardly worthy of being called an old fashioned, but I didn’t want to interrupt anything she might be willing to explain.

  9

  “MY FATHER — BRADLEY RAYBURN — HE’S a businessman,” she began. “Always has been, for as long as I can remember. He currently runs — or used to, I guess — an importing business.”

  “You mentioned that already,” I said. “What sorts of things did he import?”

  “I’m not really sure,” she said. “But he was always working. He owned the company, but I don’t think he actually did much of the work. I mean, he was always talking to people and meeting with them.”

  “Sometimes talking to people is work.”

  She smirked. “You know what I mean.”

  “Where did he work?” I asked. “Did he have an office?”

  She nodded. “Well, sure. Different places over the years, in different states and even overseas, I think. But he always worked from home, too. Down in Hunting Island, where we grew up. Daniel and I moved away for college and never came back home. Dad had a huge office there, off the east wing of the house, overlooking the dock and the ocean, and his yacht.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. Anyone who described a portion of their home using the word ‘wing’ and ‘yacht’ didn’t live in a small place. “You grew up in a mansion?”

  “Not a mansion. Well, it’s big, I guess, but I wouldn’t call it a mansion.”

  I laughed. “I bet I would.”

  “Fine,” she said, smiling. “But growing up my mother, until she died, did a good job hiding from us the fact that we were wealthy. I only figured it out when I started having friends over. Their faces told me everything I needed to know.”

  “So your mansion, on Hunting Island, next to where he parks his yacht. I thought it was all state park down there?”

  She considered this. “Yeah, I guess it is. We’re on the northern tip of it, right across Johnson Creek from Harbor Island. I think he bought the land a long time ago from the state, or something like that, but it was always pretty hush-hush. Only house on the entire island, I think.”

  “Yeah, I would’ve sworn there were no houses on the island. Your old man must have been really close with some state bigwigs to swing a deal like that. So why would someone want to kill him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. Money, I’m sure.”

  “How could someone get money from your father if he’s dead?”

  “I guess, I don’t know… maybe they would get money because he’s dead.”

  I nodded, taking another sip of the watered-down mixture. I was about to trash this round and start over, but I had her going on her father. I was in this now, so I decided I’d better sit up and pay attention. For the time being another drink could wait. “So you think he was into some… questionable business?”

  “I know he met with some shady types, but I never thought…”

  For a moment I thought she might break down and lose it, but she held it together. It was essential for me to get whatever I could out of her during this first phase of grief, as they’ll often shut down completely within a day, and it could take months to open them back up again. Again, I’m no PI, but I’d seen this before. She was dealing with a whole slew of emotions — anger, disbelief, loss, fear — and I needed to dodge those mines and navigate through it to her core, where she could tell me the truth.

  “I know this is hard, but if you can give me anything that might help me figure this out… It’s a tricky business, but it’s crucial that you’re honest with me.”

  “You think —“

  I held up a hand. “No, I’m not accusing you of not being truthful. You have been, and I appreciate that, but you’re going to start feeling all of this a lot harder in a day or two, and it will potentially get… trickier.”


  She nodded, sniffing quickly. “I understand. Okay, I can tell you that he was into importing, and the company is called Crimson Club.”

  I frowned. “Crimson Club? They have a logo or anything? A website?”

  “Yeah on the first one. Not sure about the website. He was always old fashioned.”

  “Sounds like I would have liked him.”

  “Well, you’d be the only one. He was kind of a jerk. When I was really little he was a great dad, taking us to the park, going to school functions, that sort of stuff. And he was funny, too, always tricking us with puzzles and making up terrible puns, but the more money he made the more distant he became. He got more and more serious, and aside from the obligatory birthday and Christmas gifts — always some sort of puzzles — he pretty much detached from me completely. He’d make sure I knew he was still there, I guess. Always telling me things like ‘you’re the key to it all, my Hannah.’ Just an absentee father trying not to feel too estranged from his daughter, but we both knew we had nothing in common. He started working in the yacht all the time, just camping out there on the water. By the time I was in high school he had all but told us Daniel was the favorite, and besides giving me a chunk of the business and paying for school, he rarely reached out to me.”

  My ears perked up and my spidey sense started sending me signals. “Okay,” I said, “hold on. Your father gave you a portion of the business?”

  “Yeah, Daniel and I both have an ownership interest. But he never gave me any authority or even voting power. It was a ‘tax decision,’ he told us. But I’m pretty sure his plan was to bring Daniel in and have him run the business eventually. He was always by Dad’s side, under his wing.”

  I had finally reached the floor of my glass, and tossed the cubes into the sink behind the bar. Hers was nearing completion as well, so I listened to her for another minute, talking about her home life, her relationship with her father, and how her brother was the ‘chosen one’ to him. It all seemed rather normal, at least for a wealthy family, in my opinion. I didn’t know anything about wealthy families from firsthand knowledge, but I thought I had a decent enough idea from the people I’d met over the course of my life. Well-meaning parents, caught up in their business, slowly drifting away from their kids. Seemed to me to be nothing out of the ordinary.

  She eventually drained her own glass and handed it to me. “Thanks — tell you what,” I said. “It’s late. I have some tidying up to do in the back, and then I need to touch base with Joey. Can we do this again tomorrow? You want to give me your number?”

  “Sure. Do — do you think —“

  “Yeah, I think you’ll be safe. Actually, that was what I was going to have Joey do. He’s got a good head on his shoulders, and I trust him. I was going to have him drop you off at Marley’s and park it outside, then watch the house for the night. Kid can go a month without sleeping.”

  She seemed to like this plan, but I saw another question in her eyes. “What about you?”

  “Me? Hell, I’m old. I can’t go an hour without sleep.”

  She smiled, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced.

  “Look,” I said. “I haven’t been in the ‘hunting people down’ game for a long time, and even back then it wasn’t like this. I’ve never been a detective. These assholes always come to me. I verify they’re the mark, I take them down. That’s it. So I have some brushing up to do, a few errands to run, and I was hoping to make a few calls.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay. Let’s talk tomorrow. 5pm?”

  She nodded, and I offered her an arm as I walked her to the front door. I heard Joey banging around in the kitchen, back from his errand already.

  10

  JOEY WAS SHORT, BUT NOT in a tiny sort of way. He was stocky, like a boxer, but built like a horse. He’d even boxed a bit in the Navy during his short time there, which meant he was a solid scrapper. I had sized him up when we’d first met five years ago and thought he’d make a good sidekick, so I pitched the idea to him. I told him a little about what I did, explaining the tokens and the marks. ‘Find the token, take out the mark.’ Really wasn’t that complicated.

  He did his characteristic shrug and asked a few questions, and that was that. When the first mark came by, apparently hearing about us from a ‘business associate,’ Joey was the one to spot him. I was in the kitchen when he came back and tapped me on the shoulder. “Yo, boss,” he’d said, “I think I got a token. Guy came in from the city and slapped it down on the table saying it was so he could drink free. We don’t do that, do we?”

  I remember smiling and shaking my head. These idiots were always so bold and blunt about everything. Like they owned the world and it was their playground. “No, Joey, we don’t do that.”

  I told him the play — I’d go serve him, giving him what he wanted for the night, then lead him out back when he was hammered enough to not care. It went mostly to plan that first time, but Joey did a bang-up job. He was cool, collected, and professional, even when the mark started throwing punches (he wasn’t nearly as drunk as we’d thought). Joey gave him a solid sucker punch to the nose, sending him to the asphalt, and I finished the job.

  Joey ended up having to burn the shirt he was wearing — blood doesn’t really come out well, and you don’t want anyone asking questions — but otherwise he was no worse off. He had taken the mark out and turned him into fishbait, then came right back in and started cooking up some catfish he’d caught that morning. During our late-night debrief, I couldn’t tell which I was more impressed with: his catfish or his attitude.

  I increased his hours on the spot, and raised his take on what I brought in from the marks.

  It made a lot of sense to have him actually working at the bar while we waited around for the marks, instead of having him just stand around and look awkward.

  Joey was in the kitchen now, the morning after our frat boy debacle. “Hey, kid,” I said, getting his attention. “How’d it go last night?”

  He was groggy, and rubbed his eyes, but otherwise seemed fine. “Need a nap, but it was good. No one else staying there, so no one came or went. I saw both of them head into town this morning, but I stopped following them when they hit the grocery store.”

  “Good stuff. Yeah, I doubt any of that loser’s friends will be around. They probably had no idea what he was into.”

  “What was he into?” Joey asked.

  “No idea,” I answered. “But it’s always one of the three — pedophilia, pornography, or pimping.” All of the marks were the types who stayed under the radar with the law. They were upstanding citizens in every way except one, and that one was the only reason our paths ever crossed. Most of them were into the former two categories, either buying and selling photos and videos of underage women (or men), or buying and selling the women (or men) outright. They had networks and circles that traded this shit, but they were the ones I was told to bring down.

  Joey made a puckered face. “Ugh. Man, this world is messed up.”

  “Damn right it is,” I countered, “but that’s why we do what we do. Keeps me sane. Hey, by the way — you find anything on him?”

  Joey frowned, then made a face. “No, I mean besides clothes and a wallet he didn’t have anything.”

  “What was in the wallet?”

  “Just a fake ID. Couple hundreds, three twenties.”

  I nodded. The deal was that Joey got to keep all that extra ‘stuff’ he found — I didn’t need it, and there wasn’t much we could do with it anyway. I considered it a tip for doing his job exceptionally well. “Good,” I said. “The regular payment will hit your account tomorrow.”

  It was beneficial that Joey was on my payroll as a bar hand and kitchen staffer; he worked his ass off, so I had no problem paying him what I did. The IRS typically left me alone, as we had long ago established a chain of trust funds and nonprofits that satisfied the grayer areas of their abomination we call the US tax code. I figured that since we used the same looph
oles used by the fat cats in Washington, they’d rather let anything fishy slide than open up that can of worms.

  So far, so good.

  “Nothing else, though?”

  “No, boss, why? You —“ he stopped mid-sentence like he’d just figured it out, so I hushed him before he started getting antsy.

  “It’s not that, Joey. I’m just making sure we didn’t cut any corners.”

  “I never cut corners, you know that.”

  “I know that.” I waited for him to ask again about the token, but he seemed to get the point.

  We looked at each other for a second — the young, stocky cook and the old, grizzled assassin — then starting smiling like idiots.

  “We need to get some sleep,” I said.

  “Bullshit. I need to get some sleep, old man. You didn’t have to watch a bed and breakfast all night. What’s with her, anyway? You hoping to hook me up with her?”

  I squinched an eye closed and gave him my best Clint Eastwood. “The day I hope that is the day you fishbait me.”

  He laughed. “Well, she’s a looker. You interested?”

  “She’s been through a trauma, Joey. I’m just doing my due diligence.”

  He had a smug look about him, and I knew what he was thinking.

  “And she’s married.”

  “No she ain’t.”

  “Well she’s got a boyfriend.”

  “Nope.”

  “Well I’m tired.”

  “Go get some sleep,” he said, still chuckling. “I got this. Get back before four if you can — I’d like to catch a nap before the evening shift. That okay with you?”

  “Of course,” I answered. “Thanks, Joey.”

  11

  I HAD A LAUNDRY LIST of things to take care of between my chat with Joey and his 4pm ultimatum, but there was one item that sat at the top of the list. I grabbed an antacid from the back room, washed it down with some orange juice, then pulled out my phone.