Bahamarama, page 20
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
“Had to hoist up my skinny little sweetheart and get her to crawl out the bathroom window and then go find somebody to shovel open the door,” he said.
The call came promptly at seven o’clock.
“Hello,” I said.
I’d been trying to think of something better than that, but nothing good had come to me.
“You wished for me to call?” a man said.
“Ortiz?”
A pause. And then he said, “Eduardo, he was my sister’s youngest son. Only thirty. We had his funeral today. A very private funeral. Because of the circumstances. My sister, she does not understand why I do not just kill you. I tell her it is not so easy as that.”
There was so much I wanted to say, so much that had been building up, and it all came out in a rush.
“Listen, I don’t know what it is I’ve got that you want, but whatever it is, I’ll do whatever it takes to get it to you, OK? You got that? You don’t have to send anyone else to follow me around or whack me in the head with a shovel, OK? But first you have to release Barbara and Lord Downey. I don’t have a million dollars, I can’t get a million dollars. You’ve already got some of the money from Burma. So let’s work out something else, just you and me.”
He didn’t say anything. And I thought for a moment that he had hung up.
“Ortiz?”
“I am here,” he said. “But I understand nothing of which you speak. What is this million dollars? Who are these people that you want me to release, but that I do not have? And what money has been given to me by this person I do not know?”
“Where are you?”
“Please, this you do not need to know.”
The connection was clear and crisp. I could hear music in the background, the chatter of people. It sounded as if he might be in a restaurant.
“You swear to me you aren’t behind the kidnapping?”
“You mean that you would take me at my word?”
“Just tell me, you son of a bitch, and let’s go from there.”
“I am not in the business of kidnapping, if that is what you wish to know. And the million dollars of which you speak . . .”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“You have something worth far more than that, Chasteen.”
I heard a click. The line went dead.
44
I stopped at a take-away shop in Dunmore Town and picked up dinner—fried snapper, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, and two big slices of banana cream pie. Boggy and I polished it off while sitting on the aft deck of Miz Blitz. Afterwards, I poured a glass of rum and stretched out on one of the cushioned lazarettes to plot exactly what the hell I should do. Next thing I knew it was morning. The rum sat untouched and Boggy was hosing down the deck.
I sucked down a cup of coffee and headed for the Piggly Wiggly, where I bought a ten-dollar BaTelCo phone card. Steffie Plank picked up on the first ring.
“Zack? Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you called?”
“Sorry, but . . .”
“What about Barbara?”
“Everything’s OK, at least as OK as it can be,” I said, and caught her up with everything.
When I was finished, Steffie said, “I got the money.”
“You did?”
“Well, some of it. Like three hundred fifty thousand dollars. All the vendors except one went for it. Of course, they wanted details, like were we having problems, and could they expect the same thing again next month? And I said no. I said this was just a temporary thing. But now I don’t know what to do, Zack. I don’t know where to wire the money, or how to do that exactly. And I don’t know what to tell the bank here. And I don’t know the name of the bank there. And I don’t . . .”
“Take a deep breath, Steffie.”
She did.
Then she said, “So what do I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“It’s not like I’ve done this before,” I said. “I’ve never wired money from a bank to another bank overseas.”
“What’s the name of the bank there, Zack?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve walked by it a hundred times, but—”
An automated voice broke in: “You have ten seconds remaining for this call.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Zack . . .”
“Steffie, you’ve done good, you’ve done great. I’ll call back later today.”
“Zack . . .”
The automated voice broke in again: “Thank you for using BaTelCo. Good-bye.”
I stood there trying to figure out what I should do next. Seems like I had been spending a lot of time doing that. Hadn’t gotten me anywhere. I was just muddling along, knocking heads with Victor Ortiz’s hired hands, killing his nephew, and just generally screwing up things. Steffie had done more to help Barbara than I had. She had found a way to get some of the money and she was ready to send it to me. Now all I had to do was go into the bank and make the arrangements.
There were two banks in Dunmore Town—Bank of the Commonwealth, and Bank of the Bahamas. I didn’t think it would make much difference which one I chose. But it was early, not even eight o’clock. They wouldn’t open until nine. It gave me a chance to head back to the Albury, wash up, and put on some fresh clothes. Wanted to make a good impression on the bankers.
I did all that and when I was done it was only eight-thirty. The day was just dragging along. So I headed back to Miz Blitz to let Boggy know what I was up to. I was almost there when I heard feet pounding the pavement and turned around to see Nixon Styles running toward me from Government Dock.
“I know where it is,” he said, out of breath.
“Where what is?”
“The boat, the one you were chasing yesterday. That lobster boat from French Jug. I know where it is.”
45
We sat around the big teak table in the galley listening to Nixon tell his story. After we had dropped him off at North Eleuthera, he had taken the package to his aunt and then gone out fishing with his uncle. They ran along the windwardside of the island and were drift-fishing the water just north of Glass Bridge when Nixon spotted a lobster boat tucked into a small cove beneath the limestone cliffs.
“Where all the caves are,” said Nixon. “And there’s all kinds of rocks in the water, too, some of them sticking out and some of them just under the water waiting to poke holes right through a boat. My uncle, he wouldn’t pull up all the way in that cove, didn’t want to risk it. But he got close enough so I could see the name—Cat Sass, just like the boat yesterday.”
“Did you see the man?” I asked him.
“No, didn’t see him. Figured he might be up there in one of those caves. No other place for him to be around there. No roads going in or out. About the only way you can get to those caves is by boat. Climbing up the back side of those cliffs will tear you up.”
I pulled out the chartbook and asked Nixon to show me where he found the boat. It only took him a few seconds to zero in on the general location, about two miles north of the Glass Bridge.
“This map even shows those pointy rocks that stick up out of the water,” Nixon said. “There’s five or six of them. My uncle, he says they call them the Steeples because they look like steeples on a church.”
Nixon had taken the first water taxi leaving from North Eleuthera that morning and had come straight to the marina so he could tell us about finding the Cat Sass. He said he needed to get home or his mother would be worrying about him. I thanked him and fished around in my pocket and found a five dollar bill. He wouldn’t take it.
“This one’s on the house,” he said.
Boggy made us more coffee. We sat on the boat drinking it. Outside, you’d have never guessed a hurricane was barreling down on the Bahamas. The way it is with hurricanes, the big ones, they suck all the moisture out of the path that lies in front of them, feeding on that, just paving the way. The sky was clear and blue. The wind barely stirred.
Finally, I said, “What do you think?”
Boggy said, “I think this man, Dwayne Crowe, he is in too many places.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking that, too. And those supplies on his boat. Why would he be taking all that stuff to those caves? It doesn’t sound like a place where you set up housekeeping. Unless you’re trying to keep it a secret.”
“You think he is working maybe with Victor Ortiz?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Ortiz told me he didn’t know anything about the kidnapping, but I don’t have any reason to believe him. And I don’t think Dwayne Crowe has the smarts to put something like this together and pull it off.”
“No, he would need someone to help him, someone here on Harbour Island,” said Boggy. “A man like him, he could not come and go from here—bring the cell phones, pick up the money—without attracting attention. It is very much organized. It takes many people.”
I got up and poured another cup of coffee. I looked out the cabin window. A couple of boats had already left the marina and others were getting ready to. Making the haul back to Florida, hoping to tuck in before the big winds hit.
Boggy said, “You are thinking about the police inspector?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking about him. I’m thinking about him a lot. Big gray area there. I’d sure like to know what he’s been doing the last twenty-four hours. I thought he would have checked in with me by now. Whatever he’s up to, he’s playing a close hand.”
So the two of us came up with a plan. Actually, it wasn’t so much a plan as it was a matter of wandering off blindly in two different directions and seeing what happened. But at least it would keep things in motion.
We decided Boggy would take Miz Blitz’s skiff and go snooping around near the caves. If Dwayne Crowe happened to see Boggy then, at least, he wouldn’t recognize him.
As for me, I had a lot of items on my to-do list. But having a chat with Lynfield Pederson was number one.
46
Brindley was sitting at his desk when I walked into the inspector’s office. He was listening to the police radio, his helmet on the desk, the polishing cloth beside it. I picked up the helmet and looked at it.
“Sorry, Brindley, but I still can’t see my reflection in this thing.”
Brindley took the helmet and frowned at me.
I said, “Where’s Pederson?”
“Wait here,” Brindley said.
He opened the door that said OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY and stepped into the garage out back where I had seen Bryce Gannon’s body two days earlier. He closed the door behind him. A few seconds later the door opened and Brindley said, “Inspector will see you now.”
I stepped into the garage. The big garage door was open and light streamed in. A golf cart sat on blocks inside the garage and Lynfield Pederson was squatting down behind it, fiddling around with something. He stood up and dusted himself off. He was wearing blue suit pants, a long-sleeve white shirt, and the same red tie he’d worn before. It must have been ninety-five degrees in that garage, but he was barely sweating. Bahamas heat is different from Florida heat. Florida heat sits on your skin awhile. Bahamas heat goes straight to the bone. They say you get used to it. I hadn’t. I was drenched.
Pederson said, “I was just getting ready to come see you.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “You mean, after you got finished doing some repairs on the golf cart, then ate lunch, and visited your girlfriend?”
He looked at me, his tongue working over his teeth. He said, “You still got a bug up your ass, Chasteen?”
“Yeah, matter of fact I do.”
“Must be a big bug and it’s buzzing all around driving you crazy.”
“Let’s cut the shit, Pederson.”
“Yeah, let’s do,” he said. “Where you want to start cutting at?”
“How about you tell me what you were doing for those three hours yesterday, when I sat and waited for you and the people we are trying to catch collected a quarter-million dollars?”
“Want me to account for my time, that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it exactly.”
Pederson reached for his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it up and plucked out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to me.
“What you see there?”
“It’s a pay stub.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “It’s my pay stub. Now you look close at it and tell me how much I get paid.”
“It says $941.52.”
“That’s right. Every two weeks. Ain’t shit, is it?”
“I didn’t come here to listen to you bitch about your salary.”
“No, you get the bitching as a bonus, on top of listening to everything else I’m going to tell you.” He leaned back against the golf cart, folded his big arms across his chest. “Mailboat comes from Nassau every Monday morning. Gets here about 9:30 A.M., all depending. And every other Monday it brings my paycheck. So I was down there at the dock yesterday morning waiting on the mailboat. You know why I was waiting on the mailboat?”
“No, why?”
“Because I had next to nothing in my bank account, that’s why. Had $17.13 to be exact. And I had to get my hands on one hundred and fifty dollars right away or some dead English fellow’s body was gonna be sitting on the dock at Mr. Otis’s fish house, swelling up and stinking in the sun.”
“Bryce Gannon.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Gannon. He’s OK now, don’t you worry. We got him on ice. But Mr. Otis was raising hell the other day. Said he wanted fifty dollars a day, not twenty-five dollars. Said none of the fishermen would buy ice from him as long as he’s storing that body. Said he wanted three days’ money in advance. And it’s not like I can just write out a requisition to Nassau and ask for that one hundred and fifty dollars, because Nassau doesn’t know anything about that dead body. So I had to wait on the mailboat, then go to the bank and cash my check, and take my own money to Mr. Otis. And so now I’m minus that one hundred fifty dollars until I don’t know when because it can take months getting reimbursements out of Nassau. And that’s once I can file the paperwork. Which I can’t, because I’m still working on this rat’s ass of a mess and trying to keep Nassau out of it.”
“You could have told me that yesterday,” I said.
“Didn’t figure my personal finances were anything you needed to know about. It’s why I told you it was police business.”
“I still don’t see why it took you almost three hours.”
“Believe me,” Pederson said. “I’ve been kicking my own ass for not telling Mr. Otis to go to hell so I could hook up with you earlier than I did. It was a mistake. Don’t blame you for being pissed off. I’m sorry.”
He stuck out his hand. I shook it.
“So now that we’ve kissed and made up,” I said, “I still don’t see why it took you almost three hours.”
Pederson shook his head. This time there was a sliver of a smile.
“Got-dam, I knew I never should’ve told you about knocking you on your ass. You ain’t about to let me have that,” he said. “You know Jesteen Clements?”
“No, don’t believe so . . .”
“Sure you do. Works in the kitchen at the Albury? Big old gal.”
“Oh, that Jesteen.”
“Yeah, that Jesteen, the one who saw somebody driving Bryce Gannon and Ms. Pickering in a golf cart the night Gannon was murdered. The same Jesteen you didn’t tell me about.”
“Forgot,” I said. “I meant to, but . . .”
Pederson waved me off.
“That’s alright. Would have been good to know a little earlier than I found out about it, but Jesteen, she caught me right when I was leaving the fish house after paying Mr. Otis. Said Mr. Pindle told her she better come talk to me. And then she told me how she’d seen that girl . . .”
“Tiffani St. James.”
“Uh-huh. Jesteen told me she saw her driving all three of them in the golf cart. And that got me thinking: What happened to that golf cart of Bryce Gannon’s anyway? There’s a half dozen places on the island that rent golf carts, so I came back here to the office and I had to call four of them before I found the one that rented to Bryce Gannon. And they told me it hadn’t been returned, which didn’t really surprise me. I didn’t have time to go out looking for it then because I was already late meeting up with you. But I finally tracked it down yesterday afternoon.”
He turned around and looked at the golf cart he’d been leaning up against.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Want to know where I found it?”
I nodded.
“In the parking lot at Bahama Sands.”
Pederson watched my reaction, saying, “Yeah, that’s the same kinda look I had on my face when I found it there. Like, what the hell is it doing there? Which means, either the three of them didn’t take it in the first place, and they rode in someone else’s golf cart, or they did take it, and then somebody drove it all the way back there and left it. Me, I don’t think that second choice is too damn likely.”
Pederson walked around to the back of the golf cart. I followed him. A black battery sat on a rack above the rear bumper. A heavy duty black cord was plugged into the battery. Pederson unplugged it.
“That’s how I found it,” he said. “Battery was unplugged. Cart wouldn’t run.”
“Meaning, they rode in someone else’s. Tiffani’s. One of Lord Downey’s carts.”
“Could be.”
“So Tiffani lied to me about that. She told me Bryce Gannon offered her a ride home in his golf cart and then let her do the driving. She said Gannon and Barbara dropped her off and then drove away.”
“You talked to Tiffani St. James?” Pederson said. “That something else you forgot to tell me about?”
So I told Pederson how Tiffani had visited my cottage Sunday night. I told him how she had slipped off her black dress and pitched a hissy fit when I asked her to leave.
