Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “Who are the victims to the suspect?”

  “The girl is his daughter,” I replied as the driver backed out of the driveway. “The woman, his late wife’s mother.”

  “His own kid?” Manny asked incredulously. “What the hell kind of lowlife is this guy?”

  “The lowest they come,” I replied. “A politician.”

  The alarm on the upturned milk crate next to Swimp’s bed went off. The big man sluggishly got up and turned it off, ignoring the protestations of his wife.

  “Get up and go fix some food,” he told the woman as he got dressed. “Me and the boys are leaving at first light.”

  “Fix your own breakfast, asshole,” the woman said, rolling over and covering her head with a pillow.

  She was Swimp’s second wife, the first having died mysteriously several years ago. A small woman, she was a few years younger than her husband and had arrived in the Lowcountry, broke and destitute, the same month that Swimp’s first wife died. In fact, the two of them had met only days before she died, and Swimp had moved her in the day after the funeral.

  Grabbing her leg, Swimp hoisted her off the bed and deposited her headfirst on the hardwood floor. He kicked her hard in the ass with his bare foot and roared, “Now, bitch!”

  The woman scrambled on her back into a corner, away from him, competing for space with a couple of large cockroaches. “I will,” she cried out. “Ya don’t gotta be so mean.”

  Swimp left her and went out to the front room, banging on doors as he went. Men grumbled, but Swimp heard feet hit the floor, so he continued on to the living room. Uncle Marcel sat on the couch rubbing his face, a tangled sheet around his feet.

  “You’re loud enough to wake the dead,” the old man grumbled. “When’s coffee ready?”

  “Soon as that Atlanta whore gets her ass in here,” Swimp replied. “You got your radio?”

  “Got it outta the truck last night and plugged it in. Should be all charged up.”

  “How long will the battery last?” Swimp asked, taking a warm beer from the cooler on the floor and downing half of it. “I need you out there at sunrise.”

  “S’posed to last eight hours,” Marcel replied. “Why I gotta be out there so damned early?”

  “That’s what old fucks do, ya pervert. Sit by the water and feed pigeons and shit, and watch the boats go by.”

  “Alright, alright,” Marcel grumbled. “Can I at least get some coffee first? Maybe something to eat?”

  Swimp took one of the hundreds from the stack in his pocket and handed it to his uncle. “Stop at Mickey D’s on the way. And I want my change back.”

  The old man snatched the bill from his nephew’s hand, grabbed the handheld VHF radio from its charger and went out the door without another word.

  Swimp heard the creak of the old truck’s rusty hinges as his wife passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen. Marcel’s truck started, and Swimp listened as his uncle’s transmission whined, backing into the front yard to turn around.

  Damien and two other cousins, Rick and Joe, came out of the other two rooms and sat down in the living room. Rick and Joe were Swimp’s mother’s sister’s boys and damned good divers. They’d go with Swimp on the salvage boat.

  There was a rickety old dock at a house on Spanish Point that Swimp was scheduled to demo next week. The new owners hadn’t moved in yet, so the place would be empty. If anyone asked why they were tied up there, Swimp could produce a work order and say they were just surveying the dock to see what they’d need to dismantle it.

  It was just getting light when the four cousins made their way down the long dock to where Swimp’s salvage boat and Damien’s Carolina Skiff were tied off.

  “Go up to the north end of Factory Creek,” Swimp told Damien. “Anchor up on the flats and be ready. If they come that way, Uncle Marcel will let you know. Just follow ’em, don’t try to stop ’em. Odds are they’ll go downriver, though. If they do, you can follow at a distance and be there for the fun when they get to me.”

  “Where you gonna be?”

  “Surveying that old dock over on Spanish Point.”

  “Good idea,” the cousin nodded. “Salvage boat at a pier needin’ work won’t be noticed.” With the tide high now, it was a short step down, and Damien dropped into his boat and started the outboard.

  “Call me when you’re in position,” Swimp said. Damien threw off the lines and backed away from the dock. In a moment, he had the little boat up on plane, skimming across the glassy surface of the creek.

  Dropping down into the cockpit of the converted shrimp trawler, Swimp started the single diesel engine, ordering Rick and Joe to cast off. In the little pilothouse, he placed his cell phone in the little mount that attached to the console with a suction cup. Others spent thousands on chart plotters and depth finders. The app he used was as good as any plotter, and he knew the deep parts of the waterways like the back of his hand.

  The spot Swimp had chosen for the ambush was a good one. The channel ran close to the western shore, and the river was a good mile wide there. Once you passed the hospital, houses became fewer. The one he’d be tied up behind didn’t have a neighbor for a quarter mile to the north and nothing south all the way to The Sands, two miles away.

  Swimp’s plan was to first try to hail the Jamaicans on the radio, asking for assistance. If they didn’t answer, he’d try waving them down as they approached. If they ignored him, he’d have his rocket launcher at the ready in the cockpit. He only had one rocket, but since it was a heat seeker, he didn’t feel he’d need a second shot.

  Shifting to forward, Swimp steered the boat away from the dock, following the trail of bubbles and disturbed water Damien left in his wake. Again, he brought the speed up as he turned into Cowen Creek, heading toward the yachts owned by the rich assholes on Cat Island. On one of the golf greens, a man wearing a bright yellow polo shirt was just about to make a putt. Swimp timed the blast of his air horn with the golfer’s back swing. The guy missed his shot and raised his club at Swimp, shaking his fist as the boat passed by. Swimp had done this many times and never failed to get a chuckle. Some golfers had even thrown their clubs at him.

  “Dumb fucks oughta know your boat by now,” Rick said.

  Twenty minutes later, just as Rick and Joe were tying off to the dock, Swimp’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and answered it. “You in position?”

  “Yeah,” Damien replied. “Seen Uncle Marcel when I went past the marina. Old perv’s sitting on one a the swings, watching the soccer moms walk by with their little kiddies.”

  “Bet he ain’t oogling them soccer moms’ asses, though.”

  Damien laughed at his cousin’s joke. “Yeah, you’re right, they’d be too old for him.”

  Swimp’s phone beeped and he looked at it. “Stay sharp,” he told his cousin. “The old fart’s calling me now.”

  Swimp tapped a couple of buttons and said into the phone, “Stop looking at the little girls. You wanna get picked up by the cops again?”

  “Fuck you,” Marcel responded. “Just seen Damien go by. There’s a coupla new boats at the marina. A slow trawler and a sailboat. Didn’t you say the boat we’re looking for was in the Bahamas two days ago?”

  “Yeah,” Swimp replied, getting serious. “No way either of those got here that fast. It’ll be a big powerboat or motor yacht. Something fast.”

  “Nothing like that, yet. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.”

  Swimp ended the call and turned to the two younger cousins. The brothers were only eighteen, but since they’d dropped out of school two years ago, they’d become good salvage divers. Outside of running some rum and weed, they hadn’t gotten their hands very dirty yet.

  “You boys gonna pop your cherry today,” he said with a grin.

  “Ah, hell,” Rick boasted. “You don’t know half the shit we done.”

  “Yeah, well, this is the big time,” Swimp said. “I ain’t talking about knocking over a convenience s
tore the next town over. At the least, you’re looking at being an accomplice to murder. And right here in our own backyard. Could be some kidnapping and rape added to that if we’re lucky and don’t get caught. You sure you’re down for that?”

  The two younger men looked at each other, then back at Swimp. “With what we aim to get out of this,” Joe said, “I’m gonna buy me my own boat. Maybe a car, too.”

  “Fifty thou, split between the four of us, won’t get you no boat and car,” Rick told his little brother, smacking him on the back of the head and knocking his hat off.

  The two began to scuffle, but Swimp stopped them both. “Get your gear ready!”

  Leaving the brothers to either set up their dive gear or kill one another, Swimp went to the bow, shaking his head and looking up at the sky. “Why’d you give me all the brains in the family, God?”

  An hour went by, the sun climbing steadily into the sky. Swimp’s phone rang again. It was Nick, checking on him. Swimp told him where everyone was and what his plans were. Nick said he’d call again, just before meeting the guy at the waterfront.

  Another boring hour passed. The two brothers had fallen asleep in chairs mounted to the front of the tiny wheelhouse. The sun was already halfway to its peak when Swimp heard another boat. He could tell by the sound that it was big, with twin diesel engines, but looking around from the foredeck, he couldn’t see anything.

  Maybe one a the shrimp boats, he thought. The sound grew louder, the engines spooling up to push the boat faster, and then Swimp spotted it. A big sportfisherman coming around the marker at the entrance to Battery Creek, just beyond The Sands.

  “Holy shit,” Swimp muttered, staring at the huge offshore fishing boat as it turned north toward downtown Beaufort. He checked his watch and saw that it was only ten o’clock.

  “On your feet!” Swimp ordered the brothers, quickly making his way to the wheelhouse. Standing in the shade of the overhang, he trained a pair of binoculars on the boat. It was a beauty. Over forty feet long, with a hard-topped flybridge, a long foredeck, and cockpit combing that rose only a few feet above the waterline. It climbed up on top of the water with apparent ease, the engines sounding like they were only turning at half throttle. On the flybridge, Swimp could see three men, but couldn’t make out any features, other than they were black and two had those long tangled braids, like people down in the Caribbean Islands wore.

  “I’d bet my last beer that’s them,” he said to the brothers. “Boat’s prolly stolen. They do that a lot down there. Name a the boat’s Gaspar’s Revenge, outta Marathon, Florida.”

  He debated calling Nick to let him know, but thought it’d be better to wait for Uncle Marcel to confirm it, if the boat stopped at the marina. They were early.

  Nick Cross slept late and woke up refreshed. After leaving Swimp last night, he’d gone up Broad River a short distance and just drifted with the engines turned off, while he sat on the forward gunwale and enjoyed the night air. Coming home always felt good, and being on the water cleared his mind and heightened his awareness.

  He’d decided that once this was over and he had the campaign behind him, he was going to bring Chela up here. She was addicting, and he hadn’t been with her in two months. The people in his district would surely reelect him, after he’d lost his daughter to drug smugglers. Once this was all over, he wouldn’t care what people thought. He’d be a rich man and could hide Chela in Washington easy enough. After a year or so, they could be together publicly. That’d sure jangle some nerves in D.C., as well as among the uptight conservatives here at home.

  Dressing quickly, Nick went down to the kitchen for coffee and a muffin. Sitting at the small breakfast table with his laptop, he scoured the local news services. Finding nothing, he searched for anything on the kidnapping in the Bahamas.

  There was an AP story about a shootout on Cat Island, but the service didn’t mention any connection to the abduction of his daughter and mother-in-law. There was a grainy black-and-white photo of a man who was wanted in connection with the shooting. It was taken at a distance, but at least now Nick had some idea of what Claude Whyte looked like. In the picture, he was standing with his hands clasped together in front of him, a smug look on his face and a relaxed air about him.

  Satisfied that everything was going as well as it could under the circumstances, Nick went back to his office and got the briefcase from the safe. Placing it on his desk, he opened it, carefully removing the bundles of money and stacking them beside the case. Then he took out his cell phone and made a call.

  Swimp answered on the second ring, which Nick saw as a good sign. He and his family still operated an illegal rum distillery on the outskirts of Frogmore and grew marijuana in what used to be a rice field, invisible to anyone but the high-speed fighter jets that sometimes flew over. Little chance the plants would be spotted at the speed they flew. The problem was, Swimp and his cohorts drank and smoked a lot of what they made.

  “Where are you?” Nick asked without preamble.

  “Spanish Point,” Swimp replied. “Damien’s in his flats boat at the north end of Factory Creek, in case they go that way.”

  “Who do you have in the park?”

  “Uncle Marcel. He’ll be sitting in the shade on one a them swings, watching the boats go by. He has a handheld VHF with one a those earbud things. He’ll know when any boat arrives at the marina.”

  “I don’t want anything to happen there,” Nick warned.

  “Not to worry, old buddy,” Swimp said. “If they head upriver, Damien’s boat can follow ’em easy and find out where they’re holed up, so we can pay a visit. If they come my way, well, it’s a wide stretch a water down here, and the channel passes right near me. Nothing around for a ways, and I got a rocket launcher that’ll take ’em out fast. Got two of my best divers with me, and we’ll have what you need on board long before anyone else gets there.”

  “Make sure the niggers are all dead. When the authorities arrive, give them some description of a fast boat with automatic weapons attacking the Jamaicans and headed south for the ocean. I’ll call you again before I get to the park.”

  Without waiting, Nick ended the call and put the phone in his pocket. He’d made another stop after drifting in Broad River until two o’clock. His construction company no longer did much work, but he still maintained a warehouse up on the north end of Port Royal Island.

  Nick pulled at a tag sewn into the lining of the bottom of his briefcase and lifted out a false bottom. There was a space under it about an inch and a half thick. He carefully placed a long, thin package in the space and reinserted the false bottom before stacking the money inside again.

  Inside the package was one of three throwaway phones he’d picked up at a convenience store coming from the airport yesterday. Also in the package, connected to the phone’s speaker, were two sticks of dynamite and a couple hundred finish nails.

  He had faith that Swimp could do what he promised. He had a lot of cousins out on Saint Helena Island and scattered around in just about every trailer park in Beaufort County. The bomb was just in case.

  If Swimp succeeded in blowing up Whyte’s boat, the worst that could happen was the dynamite went off, and Nick was out two hundred thousand, plus another hundred grand to pay Swimp. Best case, it didn’t go off and the bomb was rendered harmless in the water.

  But, if Whyte were to get past Swimp and make it to open water, Nick wanted to make sure the man got his full payment at the mouth of Port Royal Sound. It’d be worth the three hundred grand to know that the bodies would be lost in the outgoing tide and probably devoured by hungry sharks that the area was noted for.

  In the event that they did get past Swimp, Nick would order him to follow the boat, ready to salvage what they could and retrieve Pat and Chrissy’s bodies before anyone else arrived. Port Royal Sound is very wide, the channel at the mouth closer to barren Bay Point and almost two miles from Hilton Head. That’d be the place to blow them up, and Swimp could let him know when
to do it.

  Nick closed the briefcase and picked up his desk phone. His driver lived in one of the guest cottages on the back of the property. When the man answered, Nick told him to bring the car around to the front. They were going into town.

  Minutes later, the gates opened and the black sedan pulled out into the street, just as a white passenger van with dark tinted windows turned into the driveway across the street.

  “Are the Petersons having work done?” Nick casually asked the driver, a blocky white man of sixty, with silver hair.

  “Must be,” Kyle Ashcroft replied. “That same van was there most of the day yesterday.”

  “I’m meeting a friend on Bay for lunch,” Nick said. “I don’t know how long we’ll be, so I’d like you to stay with the car.”

  “No problem, sir. Any word from the police in the Bahamas?”

  “The man I’m meeting might be able to help,” Nick lied. Not much of a lie, though. “I’m flying down there later today.” That part was at least true. He’d head for the islands just as soon as he knew Swimp got the job done and stay there for a week before returning home. After a week, the investigation would grow cold, and he’d be told that his daughter and mother-in-law were, in all likelihood, dead. Victims of the growing drug problem in the Caribbean.

  The sheriff’s unmarked cruiser crossed the bridge and turned into the parking lot of a boat landing. I recognized it as the one where Sheena and I had seen the crazy woman in the red racing boat yesterday. Pulling back onto Sea Island Parkway, we started across the bridge again, so as to be on the same side of the bridge as the ladder.

  When the car stopped in the middle of the swing bridge, the three of us got out on the passenger side and quickly made our way up the ladder. Sergeant Benton led the way into the bridge keeper’s little glass house, built into the superstructure of the bridge.

  “Morning, Will,” an older man said as we entered. “What’s got you up and about this early?”

  “Morning, Otis,” Benton said. “These two men are federal agents. There’s going to be an arrest on the docks in a few hours, and they’ll be backing up the arresting agents.”