Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (10 page)

He turned around and headed back to Modeste’s place, entered from the fire escape and then searched for signs of Constance’s identity; a photo, letter, anything however small that might indicate who she was.

The mid-day heat wrapped around him with the strength of a python.

The place had no cross ventilation.

He turned on two small fans that did nothing other than mock him with their own inefficiency.

Nothing useful showed up.

Whoever Constance was, she was determined to remain invisible.

He took a cold shower

The water was life itself, filling his pores with all things good.

Suddenly the curtain pulled open.

A woman stood there, a white woman, startled to see him.

“Constance?”

She stepped back.

Then she ran.

He got to her before she could get to the door, flipped her to the carpet and pinned her down.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m a friend of Modeste. By extension, that makes me your friend too. They took Modeste.”

“Who took Modeste? Where is she?”

“Johnnie Rail’s people, I’m assuming,” he said. “You’re next once they find out you have the diamonds. I need you to give them to me so I can use them as a bargaining chip to get her back.”

“Get off me.”

He complied.

Then he headed back to the bathroom and said, “I’m going to dry off and get dressed. Don’t go anywhere.”

He kicked the bathroom door shut with his foot.

The water was still running.

He stepped back in.

He needed more of it.

He needed a lot more.

Everything else was secondary.

When he got out five minutes later, the apartment was empty.

The woman was gone.

27

Day Four

June 7

Saturday Afternoon

Teffinger took a place on the couch and focused on the ball peen hammers inside his head. He’d been hit before, more than his fair share, but this was different. He closed his eyes. A moment later he slumped into a laying position.

He cursed his weakness.

It did no good.

His thoughts got tangled up in strange conspiracy theories and voodoo ghosts.

Then everything turned black.

He slept.

On and on and on he slept.

He slept until the jet lag and the commotion and the fighting and the intensity of the last few days all got refilled. Then he slept longer.

It was then that a strange coolness washed over him.

He opened his eyes to find Constance dabbing a wet washcloth on his face. He focused on her eyes and liked them; partly because they were green—his favorite color—but mostly because he could see into them. He could see the inside of her. That didn’t work with all eyes. It did with hers.

He muscled into a sitting position.

The demons inside his head still worked their hammers, albeit not as fiercely, but not to be ignored either. Constance saw the expression on his face, fumbled in her purse and came out with three pills, which Teffinger swallowed without water or asking what they were. Based on the woman’s eyes, they were something good.

“I’m glad you didn’t leave,” Constance said. “I was afraid you did.”

Teffinger stretched.

“Why’d you come back?”

She handed him a small leather case.

Teffinger opened it up, and found the six leather pouches exactly as Modeste had described, with one exception. One was empty.

“Where’s Marilyn?”

“I’m going to hang onto her,” Constance said.

Teffinger frowned.

“Put her back. She’ll get you killed.”

Constance exhaled.

“She’s a final bargaining chip, in case you get killed or taken,” she said.

Teffinger got up and looked outside.

The harsh tension of everyday struggles lay over the land.

“Do you know who Madonna is?” he said.

“You mean the singer?”

“Yeah, her.”

“Sure, who doesn’t?”

“You remind me of her a little bit,” he said. “The way she looked in her
Like a Virgin
video.”

“Never saw that particular one.”

“It was before your time. We better go.”

28

Day Four

June 7

Saturday Evening

The
Like a Virgin
pretty, Constance, had some valid points, namely she knew the lay of the land, plus Modeste was her friend, meaning she could help Teffinger dial up an exchange with Johnnie Rail. Teffinger wasn’t interested and frowned to prove it. To prove it even more, he took her to the airport, made her promise not to come back until he personally called her and said it was safe, put her on a plane and didn’t leave until she pulled into the sky.
Then he rented a ratty straight-handlebar motorcycle at a dubious place near the airport that charged him more than the sign said, drove to Constance’s apartment and entered, compliments of her key and permission.

The place hadn’t been ransacked.

He pulled the curtains shut, closing out a twilight sky, and found a well-stocked fridge. He was making a yogurt and cucumber sandwich when his phone rang and Sydney’s voice came through.

“Have you heard what happened?”

He braced.

“No.”

“We had a murder,” she said. “A woman. It was pretty brutal.”

“Station?”

“No. We’re still trying to identify the body. Here’s what makes it interesting. Her body showed up down at BNSF, a stone’s throw from Tarzan’s place.”

“Tarzan—”

“A couple of the switching guys found her about twenty minutes ago. I’m at the scene right now. She’s naked. Her throat was slit. Here’s the most interesting part—her eyes were gouged out. All hell’s breaking loose down here.”

Teffinger pictured it.

“Did you find a note?”

“What do you mean?”

“A note, you know, the kind of thing that was left with those girls in Miami and New York,” he said.

“No, nothing like that. You think it’s the same guy?”

“It’s possible. Search around. Check her body cavities. If it’s not there, go out in an ever-increasing radius. Don’t stop until you’ve exhausted every inch. I don’t care if you have to go a hundred yards. Check every boxcar, including the roofs. Check inside Tarzan’s place too.”

“Okay. By the way, the chief has a message for you.
Get your ass back here, right now
.”

“He’s so poetic. Tell him Robert Frost has nothing on him.”

He finished making the sandwich and sat on the couch, chomping into it and washing it down with orange juice straight out of the carton. The new murder played inside his head like a bad 8mm film. He could see the knife ripping across the throat. He could see the blood spurting out of the gaping hole. He could see the look of horror on her face. He could see her spent body on the ground, only seconds dead, while someone—Tarzan?—worked at getting her eyes out, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Tarzan, is that you?

Are you sending me a message?

Suddenly his phone rang. He expected Sydney, or maybe the chief, but the voice that came through belonged to Jack Canyon, the detective in charge of Lachey Silk’s murder. “Red book, top shelf,” Canyon said. “We ran it down.”

“What’d you find?”

“Well, after the murder, the landlord ended up putting a lien on everything in the apartment for unpaid rent,” he said. “All the books got boxed up, with a lot of other stuff, and placed in a large locked storage bin down in the guts of the building. It’s all been under lock and key almost since day one. He let us in and we dug through one dusty box after another. We finally found it, a red hardcover. Inside was the piece of paper, exactly as you said. NOIZ.”

“So it actually exists—”

“It does,” he said. “There were no prints on the paper but a lot on the book. We’re running them but no one of interest has popped up yet. That book could have been handled or read by twenty different people.”

“Well, let me know.”

“The thing that is of interest, though, is that the book’s been in storage all this time,” he said. “You could tell that not only from the landlord’s story but also from the way the boxes were laying undisturbed and uniformly covered in dust. This particular box was underneath several others and way in the back. To me, that means that this isn’t some after-the-fact prank or anything like that.”

“It was put there by the killer,” Teffinger said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Teffinger took a swallow of orange juice and said, “I’m leaning towards NOIZ as standing for
no eyes.
We had a homicide in Denver today where the victim’s eyes were gouged out. I believe it was the same guy who did the deed on Lachey Silk. He thinks that people can see through his eyes and that’s why he kills them, to get free.”

“That’s a weird theory.”

“It’s a weird world,” Teffinger said. “You’re the man, for running that down so good. I’ll be in touch.”

He took a peek outside, found everything normal, and then went into the bedroom to see if there was a window facing the back. There wasn’t but there was something just as good, an old videotape player under the bed.

He connected it to the TV and powered it up.

Come on, work.

The lights came on.

Yeah, that’s the way.

He put the voodoo tape in—the one he got from the shooter’s apartment, the guy who made Teffinger throw a broken bottle into his face—and punched play. A bizarre voodoo scene sprang to life, jerky, grainy, taken with a bad camera by a bad amateur at night. A woman, a white woman with blond hair, was bound spread-eagle on the ground. Wicked drums beat and frantic dancers gyrated. Another woman dangled a snake above her head, then lopped off the head with a machete and dripped the blood and guts into the victim’s eyes and nose and mouth.

The camera zoomed in on the woman’s face.

Teffinger’s heart raced.

It looked like Station.

The scene ended with a jerk of the camera and then went black.

He replayed it all, this time focusing on the victim’s face, trying to decide one way or the other if indeed it was Station. In the end he was 80% sure it was.

He wasn’t positive, but pretty damn close.

29

Day Four

June 7

Saturday Night

As twilight thickened over Haiti, Teffinger worked his way out of Port-au-Prince on the motorcycle until he was good and far from prying eyes. Where the road came close to a beach, he double-checked for dangers one final time, concluded he was as alone as he could ever be, and then buried the box of diamond divas three feet under the sand near the tree-line in a location he carefully paced off from a trunk.

When he got back to the bike, there were still no signs of cars or humans.

He memorized the location and then continued up the broken dirt and gravel road, getting closer and closer to Johnnie Rail’s villa. He had no specific plan other than to try to get a look at the place and figure out if Modeste was being held there.

The lights of the villa came into view a kilometer up ahead, peeking through thick tropical foliage. Teffinger killed the bike’s lights and maneuvered it well off the road, out of sight of any headlights that might swing by.

There were no distinguishable markers, other than one rock near the edge of the road, no larger than a briefcase.

It was almost full dark.

He memorized the location as best he could and proceeded to close the gap on foot.

The villa sat in the sand of a circular lagoon, like the crown jewel in a ring. It pulsed with a loud reggae beat, barely audible at this distance but prominent at the source. A soft half-moon shimmied with an eerie translucence, more like a shadow than a light, dancing lightly on the water on quiet ghost feet. Teffinger made his way to where the trees met the sand and crept one careful foot after another towards the glowing yellow lights of the structure.

A party was in play, beating the tropical night with a live band next to the pool, throngs of scantily clad pretties both black and white, and lots and lots of voices, the kind that came out when too much booze or drugs went in.

Teffinger made his way to the closest shadows, assessed one more time the sanity of what he was about to do, and then strolled into sight towards the pool like he owned the place. He pulled a beer out of a tub of ice, twisted the top off and took as long swallow.