Cold Dead Hands (A Mike Casper Thriller Book 1)

by Sebastian Blunt

  Cold Dead Hands

  A Mike Casper Thriller

  Cold Dead Hands

  A Mike Casper Thriller

  Sebastian Blunt

  4XDX

  Cold Dead Hands

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental

  .Copyright © 2021 by Sebastian Blunt

  ISBN – 13: 978-1-7358847-3-8

  A 4XDX Thriller Book

  Cover Art by Christian Bentulan

  Dedication

  For Jack and Linda, who always have good

  insights, advice, and tell me that my books should be made into movies.

  Chapter One

  “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to keep your guard up?”

  The man lying on the bed merely whimpered in desperation while trying to free his hands.

  “As my dad would say, ‘you’re in quite a pickle now.’”

  Fioret thrashed and twisted, believing that somehow he could escape. The woman had stuffed a sock in his mouth and duck-taped it over. He was stripped down to boxers. Little spots of blood dotted his chest where she’d pierced him.

  “Honestly, Mr. Fioret.” She sucked in her breath through a perfect set of teeth. “Oh, do forgive me. Doctor Fioret—I’m so sorry if I didn’t afford you the respect to which you are entitled.” A laugh. “Do you hear how I’m speaking? I sound like a classy, refined lady, don’t I?”

  He nodded, hoping for some way, any way to flee.

  Suddenly, she shrieked with a self-mocking, sinister sound that made him cringe; he began struggling again.

  “You know that I never leave loose ends? It’s kind of an objective for me. I’ve also learned that killing, or even arranging for someone’s death, is a skill that requires practice. So we’ll just call you and your doctorate my—” she giggled. “We’ll call you my practice dummy. I like that.”

  Fioret was terrified and trembling uncontrollably now. Then he just stopped fidgeting. She noticed.

  “Do you know what your mistake was?” she asked. He stared at her, looking for any sign that this nightmare would just go away.

  “You kept pushing me—didn’t know where to draw the line. There are people like me in the world—smarter than everyone else. We pluck the low-hanging fruit. You have money, and a girl has needs, you know. So, instead of just walking away, going back to your wife—yes, the one you cheated on by screwing me, asshole.” She stopped her rant and pulled out an innocuous-looking stick of wood, which she held in her latex-gloved hands. “With all your education, you should have learned to leave shit alone. My dad used to say that. Your kind wouldn’t be caught dead—pardon the pun—with the likes of my father.”

  She sat down on a chair close to the bed. The small rented bungalow was dim and quiet except for her calculated rambling.

  “Did you know that my dear papa used to beat me and force me to do things—sexual things to him? Doesn’t that explain why I’m so twisted?”

  Fioret stared at her blankly.

  She stood up and did a 360 and then stared back at him. “That’s all bullshit; my dad was great. He treated me like a queen. You thought that I must be messed up because of my daddy issues.” She didn’t bother to look for comprehension in his face. “But, I’ve learned that having stuff is better than not having stuff. You are an ass. Was $120K worth your life? Just walk away.”

  Sweat had formed on his brow and dripped in his eyes. He ignored the stinging.

  “Do you want to walk away now? You won’t go to the police, right?”

  He frantically shook his head.

  She held up the brown stick. It was perhaps as wide as a fat pencil but sharpened. She gazed at it like she was thinking something over.

  “Do you know how to get away with murder? I’ve been practicing for a while now, and I’m quite good at it. The best way is to make it look like a beautiful accident, but when you can’t do that, you never, ever use a murder weapon that you can’t dispose of. Hence, this little piece of wood here.” She flipped it expertly between her fingers as if she was showing it off to the man on the table. “It comes from a local tree called Lignum Vitae, and it is the densest, toughest wood you can find on our planet—like a piece of steel, almost. It’s hard to believe that a simple stick is going to put you in the ground, isn’t it?”

  A mortal panic overwhelmed him. Fioret turned rapidly back and forth.

  “Stop moving!”

  He stopped despite his utter terror.

  “Thank you for following my instructions.” She shoved the sliver of wood with sufficient force to squeeze between his ribs and penetrate his heart. The shock of realization radiated from his face. She consumed it while gripping Fioret’s neck as he suffered his death throes. It was over quickly, and the woman began singing, “Bye-bye Fioret, bye-bye. Not sad to see you dead. Bye-bye.”

  After placing the stick in a plastic bag, she silently left the beach bungalow. Her cheap blond wig would have to be dealt with, but that wasn’t a problem.

  She looked down at the ocean. There were some teenagers down on the sandy shoreline dancing around a bonfire. With her skinny jeans and in the dark, she could pass for a twenty-something. She picked up a few bits of driftwood and tossed them on the fire. So goes the murder weapon, she thought. Tomorrow she would walk over and deposit $110,000 into her account at Jefferson Town Bank in San Pedro, Belize. She did a little math. With the 110k, she was up to 2.6 million. Not enough. The next target was going to be the big one. The rehearsal was over; it was time to leave the island, head back to the States, and hit the lottery.

  *

  There is a well-known truth concerning the two most beautiful moments in a sailor’s life—the day he purchases his dreamboat and the day he sells his old and tired nightmare. Most skippers are wedged somewhere in the middle.

  Mike Casper stood on a narrow strip of beach in the village of Pellaro. His new hometown was perched on the southwestern coast of Italy. The dusty, ramshackle place was a part of the slow-paced Reggio Calabria Province—a simple and unremarkable swath of land.

  The boat dealer, Alonzo, rattled off a list of repairs. Mike looked at his twenty-five-footer as it sat up on blocks.

  “Alonzo. Please speak English. Mi dispiace, I’m sorry, but my Italian is not good. Did you just say 6,000 Euros?” He stared at the boat guy and tried to remain pleasant. At the same time, he hoped that his strategy of wearing grungy clothes and scuffed-up sneakers might draw some sympathy. It didn’t. Alonzo repeated the price.

  After the first week in Pellaro, he’d realized that talking with a southern accent didn’t help him communicate with the locals. Instead, it made him incomprehensible. Mike hoped that some clever Italian would start calling him “Tex” or “Bubba.” He wanted to portray himself as just some anonymous redneck bum hanging out on Italy’s quiet shores. He dumped the fake accent but was cautious about presenting a dull and unremarkable image. Being careful also meant growing out his brown hair. On a good day, he figured he looked like a scruffy Robert Downy Jr., on a bad day, well, he just looked like his 31-year-old loser self.

  “Un sacco, Al. I mean what the hell, amico?”

  Alonzo stared back at him, his dark eyes not revealing any emotion. “È quello che è, amico.”

  It looked to Mike that Alonzo spat out that last word, “friend,” with a bit of disdain, but maybe he was just paranoid. On the other hand, paranoia was a good thing nowadays. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, man. You don’t have a choice, blah, blah, you don’t set the prices. Damn.”

  Mike blew out a br
eath and turned his eyes to gaze over the gentle waves that lapped up against the crumbling breakwater. It was a beautiful view, one that still hadn’t gotten old. And it made him feel safe if such a thing was possible. He knew that in an hour, he could be out at the sea, his little engine putting space between him and whatever nasty surprises might be waiting for him here.

  Still, none of that could happen if he didn’t spring to fix the Sylvia Cantonni, a simple boat with a name of unknown origins.

  Alonzo looked at the boat fondly. “She good. She love water and the fresh air!”

  Mike chuckled to himself. She was a good enough friend, but friends that needed money could quickly get you into trouble.

  “Okay, yeah, I’ll figure out something. Give me a couple of days. By the way, how long will it take you to do the repairs?”

  Alonzo smiled. He had a missing front tooth. “One day.”

  “Six-thousand Euros for one day of work?”

  “It is the parts. You need replace all filters. New cutlass bearing. Probably new shaft. And I find other problems.”

  All of a sudden Alonzo’s English was much improved.

  “Okay. I got it. But, I want a list of all the parts. Capisce?”

  The repairman seemed to relax, knowing that he just got himself another job. “Of course, I understand. If you have the money, I start next morning.”

  Mike sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “Not tomorrow, the next day.”

  Alonzo gave him a sly grin. “Exactly what I said, next morning. So you get money, and I do fix. Ciao.”

  They nodded to each other and shook hands. Mike turned and walked back to the Sylvia to lick his wounds.

  At three on an August afternoon, he still had another four hours of sunshine. And there was nothing more beautiful than watching it set over Sicily just six miles away to the west. Mike nodded off under the Bimini top, which shaded the stern. Sometime later, he woke with a beer can still in his hand. Too bad. So sad. The can felt nearly empty, and what remained was warm and flat. “A metaphor for my life,” he said to himself.

  The guy who used to be called “Casper, the friendly ghost” stood on the dusky beach and then headed back to his “luxury” villa. By sunset, the streets of Pellaro were nearly empty—except for the occasional stray dog sniffing around for a chicken bone.

  Mike walked several hundred meters to the corner of a rundown commercial boulevard. There was a corroding mesh fence all around his landlord’s junkyard. The rusty gate was open as expected, with a few old cars in the process of being disassembled for parts. He whistled a 90’s love song from his childhood—very quietly. The whole place measured 60 yards by 50 yards and was bordered with dilapidated containers. In the middle of all the shipping boxes stood random piles of washing machines, ovens, cars, and tons of decaying goods. Along the far side was a white container with a cutout window and a cruddy-looking door. Home-sweet-home.

  It was cheap as hell because he made a deal with Augustino, the owner, to watch the yard in exchange for the equivalent of $100 a month. The perk was the “Villa,” as he’d called it. The upside: no address, no phone, no internet, and no questions—he was totally off the radar, one of the most challenging things to accomplish anywhere in the world. He didn’t even have a cellphone.

  There were a few things that made the place user-friendly. One of them was the heavy lock on the steel door. That was coupled with properly welded window bars.

  Casper slid the deadbolt behind him. His bed was to the right and fit with room to spare along the container’s eight-foot wall. The left side had a kitchenette. In the middle sat a little sofa, chair, and coffee table. He had a small radio and bookshelf under the front window. The place was spotless. Little by little, Mike cleaned, scrubbed, painted, and replaced all the old crap that was in there from the last “tenant.” It was externally plain, but the inside was fair.

  He flicked on the radio to barely receive the only English station in the south of Italy. Despite his best efforts to tune it in, the signal tended to drift into oblivion periodically. The next thing was to pull the bed away from the wall. Mike borrowed Augustino’s angle grinder to cut away a tiny panel from the corrugated steel. It came out great, and it hid the stash of Euros that he’d smuggled into the country.

  The thin metal box inside popped open at the push of a button. “And there you are, my little friends.” He carefully checked the five wads of bills. Each one was 10,000 Euros. There were some dollars, pounds, and coins. Mike flicked off the rubberband and counted out 6,000 for the smiling Alonzo. “What a rip-off,” Casper muttered to himself. The rest went back into his secret compartment, and the panel fit perfectly to conceal it.

  For almost six months, until the water leaking by the prop shaft stopped him, Mike had done his best to make a little money fishing in the Messina Strait. He was a fast learner, and after a month slaving away on a boat owned by a friendly enough fellow, he’d bought the Sylvia Cantonni. It was a pretty vessel, but the little Yanmar inboard was the best thing about her—at least that part was good. The hull and the rest were worn, aged, and weathered, but she was still seaworthy enough for fishing. So he went out every day when the weather was decent at four in the morning.

  Generally, the Italian markets and restaurants in town would buy what he pulled up, give him a grunt, and probably laugh at the odd American. It was a poor living, and that was okay.

  Casper opened the fridge. Cereal and milk would have to do. At 9:30, it was already past his bedtime. Tomorrow there would be no fishing, so he flicked on his other radio. A shortwave model that picked up the North American broadcasts in English.

  “You’re my little indulgence, aren’t you?” He scratched his head. “Wow, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m talking to appliances.”

  Nothing new was going on in the world. Same old politics. Continual saber-rattling by the Iranians. If he got bored enough, maybe listening to a soccer match in Italian would eventually happen—but Mike doubted that. He did have one pastime that was a memorial to his dad. With his landlord’s permission, he strung up a 20-foot wire antenna outside his “house.” That allowed him to receive morse-code signals that bounced all over the planet—when conditions were right. As a kid, his dad taught him everything Mike needed to know to pass a ham radio exam, but then teenage obsessions lured him away.

  “Mikey, everyone needs a hobby. Why not do something worthwhile like your old man?”

  But then there was Angie, Hallie, and other girls. Then the guys introduced him to pot and meth, and that supplanted hobbies. A lot of things that he should have done got shoved in a closet and forgotten.

  He tuned around on one of the amateur radio frequencies until he heard the rhythmic beeps. It was an Italian station talking to somewhere in Canada, but Mike’s antenna wasn’t good enough to hear the other operator. “That’s right, Mikey, even a patrolman has to have a hobby. Can you imagine a Brooklyn cop like yours-truly fiddling with electronics?”

  “Yes, Dad, I can,” Casper whispered to himself.

  In memory of his father, he’d worked hard for the last seven months getting decent at translating the radio signals.

  “Not a complete loser, Dad. Sure, a guy on the run, hiding out, but only semi-worthless.”

  Two days later, the boat was fixed and in the water. Alonzo turned out to be decent enough to go over all of the repairs he’d done to the Sylvia. It was a lot—much more than expected. The quality of the work cheered Mike up a bit; restored a little faith in his fellow man. The missing-tooth guy handed over the keys.

  “Good luck to you. Boat swim now. Very seagoing.”

  After what he’d seen, the Italian’s claim seemed reasonable. He handed over the 6,000 in cash. Alonzo counted every bill, then slapped Mike on the shoulder and said, “Go fish you!”

  Casper waded out to the Sylvia. Her draft was shallow like all the boats on this coast. There wasn’t anything remotely like a marina, just breakwaters of stones, the way the Italians had
been doing it for thousands of years. He climbed up the ladder hanging off the stern. The cockpit was spotless. It was hard to tell that nets of fish were hauled on board just four days earlier.

  Mike looked up and down the coast. Almost all of the boats were on the beach if they were small enough. The larger ones, like his, had anchors dropped, and maybe they were tied to the rock jetties. Today he’d be the greenhorn, deciding to go out late in the morning and stay out all day. He had to admit that he knew jack-shit about fishing, certainly not like the locals. They would be laughing if they saw him. A picture entered his head of the Pellaros poking fun at the American heading out eight hours late.

  Casper grumbled to himself. The truth was that the experienced Italianos always netted at least twice what Mike did.

  “Well, let’s see what a little day fishing will do. Take that Luigi and Mario!” He said it out loud, but no one was around to hear him.

  Mike cranked the Yanmar diesel, and she purred or rather puttered loudly. He warmed up the engine, checked the nets, and searched for leaks. It was dry, almost like having a new boat.

  Southern Italy was hot with very little wind in August. Mike stripped down to a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a tee-shirt. He’d already gotten a lesson in the Mediterranean sun—lathering up was a necessity. Even with it, his skin was tanned nicely for a city boy.

  He tossed the stern line up onto the breakwater and hauled up the anchor. A slight drift towards the rocks led Mike to hustle for a boat hook to push off. He rush back to the cockpit and some pressure on the throttle lever got the Sylia Cantonni past the rocks and pulling out. A check to starboard and port gave a nearly unobstructed view in every direction, except for some teenagers swimming around a pair of worn-out little runabouts. Mike brought the rpm’s up to 2300 and made his course due west.