Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (12 page)

Teffinger looked for lies and found none.

“Widson Danticat,” he said. “He came for her. Unfortunately, I was with her at the time and it didn’t work out for him. He ended up with a broken bottle in his face.”

Rail grunted with disgust.

“Danticat’s a nobody who does dirty work for whoever has the money,” Rail said. “One of his primary clients is a voodoo woman named Janjak.” He retreated in thought and added, “It would make sense that she figured out about your friend. She has ways to see things that can’t be seen.”

Teffinger nodded.

“I found a voodoo tape in Danticat’s apartment. The connection is definitely there. Where can I find her?”

Rail shook his head.

“You don’t find her,” he said. “She finds you.”

“Not this time. Give me an address.”

Rail frowned.

“You can’t do this alone,” he said. “I’ll help but here’s the deal. You get your friend back, assuming she’s still alive. I get my stuff back, though; all of it. She keeps none of it. You keep none of it.”

“I don’t want it,” Teffinger said. “If we get her back, you need to leave her alone afterwards. I don’t want you tracking her down for revenge. Everyone walks away.”

“Deal.”

Rail held his hand out.

Teffinger shook it.

“She never really planned to take anything in the first place,” Teffinger said. “It sort of fell into her hands.”

He told Rail the story—how Modeste came to the villa to take the job offered by May-May, how she found everyone dead, how the bags were right there for the taking, how she picked Teffinger up on the plane for protection, which is how he knew about everything.

What he didn’t tell the man is how Modeste sold the gold in New York and wedged the money into a Cayman account. Nor did he tell him that he had the diamond divas buried under the sand down the road, or how Modeste’s friend, Constance, still had one of them—Marilyn.

Rail listened to every word, stood up and said, “Give me ten minutes. Then we have work to do.” He grabbed Evil Angel’s hand. “You come with me.”

33

Day Five

June 8

Sunday Morning

Alone, Teffinger poured another cup of coffee and took the opportunity to call Station Smith. “You still alive?”

“Alive and well,” she said.

“You’re laying low, I hope.”

“Pretty much.”

“No, not pretty much,” he said. “Do it fully. Things haven’t quieted down yet. In fact they might be worse than ever.” He took a sip. “I have a weird question for you. I’m in Haiti and I came across a videotape of a voodoo ceremony. There was a woman there who looked a lot like you. Was it, by any chance?”

Silence.

“Station, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

Her voice sounded like a spider was crawling up her leg.

“It was you,” Teffinger said.

“Nick, stay out of it,” she said. “Get the hell out of Haiti. You’ll end up dead and so will other people. Don’t call me anymore.”

The line died.

Teffinger dialed back but the woman didn’t pick up.

He called Sydney and said, “Any signs yet of Kovi-Ke?”

“No, none.”

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Station was involved in some kind of voodoo ritual down here in Haiti, I’m not sure exactly when but I’m guessing not too long ago. Go talk to her and get the details. Don’t let her push you off. Get answers. I want to know who did it to her—I suspect it’s a voodoo woman down here they call Janjak but I want to know for sure. Find out when it happened and how it came about; and most importantly, why didn’t she tell me about it? ”

“Nick, it’s Sunday—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I’ve got plans to go see Vivid Black.”

He knew the band. He’d caught them at the Taste of Colorado last year and they were awesome.

“You’ll have to see them another time,” he said. “Be sure Station still has her bodyguards. Oh, one more thing. Ask her if she’s ever been able to see through someone else’s eyes.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I was. Oh, one more thing.”

“That’s two things.”

He smiled.

“Station told me to get out of Haiti or I’d end up dead and so would other people. Find out who she was talking about. Who else will die?”

He was about to hang up when Sydney said, “Nick, are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I got a chance to tell you yet,” she said. “Remember when you asked me to talk to Kovi-Ke about the other two murders she saw?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I did that,” she said. “Do you have time to hear about them?”

“Absolutely.”

“One of was Faren White, a San Francisco woman, killed three years ago. The other was Jaylor Colt, killed four years ago. Get this, she was a Cuban diplomat who got killed in Washington, D.C.”

“How’d you get their names?”

“Leigh Sandt.”

“She’s helping?”

“God, Nick, she doesn’t blame you for what happened to Poppy. I’ve talked to both of the detectives in charge. Neither remembers any notes being found at the scene but they’re going to send me their whole files. I’ll forward them to you as soon as I get them. I’m hoping that’s tomorrow.”

“Find out if either of them have been to Haiti,” he said.

“Oh, on a different note, something weird happened with that dead lawyer down by Tarzan’s place,” Sydney said.

“How weird?”

“Weird enough. She makes big bucks but she was staying at a fleabag down on Colfax. She wasn’t using her real name, either. She was using the name Melody Pincher.”

“How’d you find out?”

“When she got to Denver she rented a car under her real name,” Sydney said. “It had a GPS that showed the vehicle at the hotel during the nights, from about midnight until six in the morning. The manager recognized her as Melody Pincher. Unfortunately, if someone came to see her we don’t know about it. The hotel had only one security camera and it wasn’t working. Her room, 201, opened onto an exterior landing that fed down to the parking lot.”

She fed him details for another five minutes. He hadn’t hung up for more than ten seconds when Rail appeared.

“Let’s go,” the man said.

Teffinger stood up, downed what was left of his coffee, and fell into step.

34

Day Five

June 8

Sunday Morning

Teffinger expected Rail to take him to some kind of a voodoo haunt in the guts of the city, with skulls and jars stuffed with submersed organs and things he didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. Instead, they ended up twenty miles south, on a beaten single-lane road that went on forever before it finally dead-ended at the ocean.

Rail stopped a quarter-mile short, turned the vehicle around so it was in escape mode, and killed the engine.

“Her place is up there around the bend,” he said.

Teffinger grabbed the man’s wrist.

“Wait here.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re both better off if I do this alone.” Rail wrinkled his face, not liking the idea. “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to cut you out,” Teffinger added. “Wait here.”

Then he was gone.

Around the bend aqua water came into view, lapping softly at a silky sand beach. A jeep and several other vehicles were stationary near a couple of thatched structures that looked like garages or outposts. A barefoot man sitting on the ground in the shade had his back against a wall. His head was bent forward and a hat dipped over his face, in siesta mode. His shirt was off and his chest was ripped with muscles. Next to him, leaning against the structure, was a rifle.

Other than him, there was no sign of life.

A rowboat was pulled up on the sand, just out of the water’s grip.

Three or four hundred yards offshore a small island made of sand and palms rose out of the water, the whole thing not being much larger than a football field. The thatched roofs of three or four structures were visible on the far side. On the beach were a handful of rowboats.

Modeste was there.

She was being held captive in one of the structures.

Teffinger could feel her.

His eyes fell back to the rowboat. It wasn’t more than thirty steps from mister rifle. If the guy woke up, Teffinger would be an easy target, not only on the beach but also all the way on the row over. One shot, even if it missed him, would alert whoever was on the island.

He’d be a mouse between two snakes.

He retreated into the palms, stripped down to his boxers, hid his clothes in the foliage and made his way on quick but quiet feet to the water’s edge. Then he was in with only his head showing, paddling with his hands and legs under the surface in a sidestroke as he made his way slowly towards the island. From the shore, it hadn’t looked that far. He now realized it was a dangerous distance, maybe farther than his mediocre-at-best skills would allow, particularly given the recent stitches to his body.

The water, cool at first, now felt like a bath.

He paced himself, intent on not running out of breath or exerting himself so hard that he pulled the stitches out.

It took an insufferable time but he finally got close enough to where his feet mercifully touched bottom. He caught his breath, saw no one, and started towards the water’s edge in chest deep water.

Something brushed his leg.

It was a shark, undeniably, a small one, maybe only four feet or so, but definitely enough to rip him to shreds if it got the notion into its prehistoric brain.

He didn’t let himself panic.

Instead he stood still until the sinister shadow moved away. Then he pushed his way to the water’s edge and scurried across the beach into the palms, where he fell to the sand, rolled onto his back and let one thought and one thought only play in his mind, namely that he made it; he was there; he didn’t drown or get eaten in the process.

Getting back would be different.

Strength-wise, he doubted he could do that twice in one day, not without a good long rest. Emotion-wise, he wasn’t sure he could get back into shark-infested waters, however uneventful the encounter with the baby had been, especially since now, on examination, a stitch had pulled out and the wound had opened enough to let blood drip.

He closed his eyes.

The darkness felt like whiskey.

He let his body rest and his lungs fill with air.

Suddenly something tapped his chest.

It was the barrel of a rifle in the hands of a large man with a serious face, one that was ready for fighting if Teffinger was stupid enough to take things there. Three equals were beside him; armed men with mean attitudes.

“Up,” the man said.

35

Day Five

June 8

Sunday Afternoon

They led him across the island, winding through the palms and brush, to the opposite side where there was a large structure surrounded by several thatched outbuildings. They made their way past the structures to the beach. Out in the water forty or fifty yards distant was yet another small island, a circular satellite of sand not much more than fifty feet across, holding a few trees and breaking the water’s surface by only a marginal amount. The sand between here and there was submersed under the water only a few feet.

The riffle pushed into Teffinger’s back.

“Move!”

He turned, saw poison in the man’s eyes, and stepped into the water, which was incredibly warm and rose only to his waist as he headed across.

At the island he found something he didn’t expect.

On the far side, lying face down on a blanket near the water’s edge, was a woman; a woman with very dark skin, wearing a white bikini bottom and no top. She turned her head briefly as Teffinger approached, too fast for him to make out the features of her face. When he got to her she said, “Rub my back.”

Her voice was deep.

Her back wasn’t normal.

It was covered with scars, a hundred or more, each about two inches long, as if they had been individually carved in with the tip of a blade, not stitched, and allowed to close on their own, resulting in wounds that were slightly raised and visibly lighter than her skin tone.

“Are you Janjak?”

The woman didn’t raise her head or show her face, which was hidden against her arm and under long, black dreadlocks.

“Yes,” she said. “Rub my back.”

Teffinger knelt down in the sand and complied.

The woman’s muscles were taut.

Her body was strong and shapely, an equal to Kovi-Ke’s.

Her skin glistened with heat.

“I’m looking for a friend,” he said. “Her name is Modeste.”