Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (15 page)

42

Day Six

June 9

Monday Afternoon

Rail had company when Teffinger got back to the villa, a good-looking man in his late forties, white, clean-shaved, with a full head of black hair combed straight back, a man who moved with confidence and looked like he’d be equally at home in a board room or on a sailboat, dressed in khakis and a blue button-down shirt.

“Teffinger, meet Stephen Blake, my IP attorney out of New York.”

They shook.

The man had a solid grip.

“New York, huh?”

“Coran, Night & Cage,” Blake said. “Maybe you’ve heard of us?”

“Sorry, no. I’ve heard of New York, though.”

The man smiled.

Rail said, “Copyright, that’s the name of the game. Everything I do, and I mean everything, whether it’s writing a line of lyrics, a guitar riff, a whole song, everything, Stephen gets it copyrighted for me, worldwide, before anyone else in the world knows it exists, outside the band of course. It’s an upfront cost but it saves a ton of litigation down the line when someone comes out of the blue and tries to say you stole it from them.”

“Sounds logical,” Teffinger said.

Blake nodded.

“It’s the only way to go. The world’s filled with thieves and lowlifes. Unfortunately, Johnnie and everyone like him are walking targets.”

“I’d imagine so.”

Rail said, “He also does copyright enforcement, cease and desist letters, that kind of thing, although to be honest I don’t really give a rat’s ass if someone else steals my stuff. My primary concern is that no one claims that I stole theirs. I have a reputation to uphold.” Teffinger must have had a look on his face because Rail added, “Give us an hour or so to finish up. Then I’m all yours.”

Teffinger shook Blake’s hand.

“Heading back today?”

“Morning, actually.”

Rail slapped the man on the back and looked at Teffinger.

“There are some pretty good women down in Port-au-Prince,” he said. “Not that much money, either.”

Stephen shrugged.

“A man’s got to have his vices.”

An hour later Sydney called.

“I just talked to Station’s sister, Melinda,” she said. “She had quite the story.”

“In what way?”

“Two years ago there were four of them on a 38-foot sailboat, Station and Melinda and their two boyfriends at the time, guys named John Vesten, who was with Station, and Danny-Dan Jones, who was with Melinda. They charted the vessel in Jamaica and were sailing to the Dominican Republic on a two-week trip. When they passed by Haiti, they were boarded and Station was taken. The other three were held at gunpoint until the next day, at which point Station was returned. That night, she was subjected to some kind of voodoo ritual.”

“Did anyone report it?”

“No, they were under threat of murder if anyone ever said anything to anybody,” Sydney said. “They made a pact and kept it secret all this time.”

“Janjak,” Teffinger said.

“So you think she killed Station?”

“That’s my guess, through Kovi-Ke,” he said. “My suspicion is that Kovi-Ke is working for her. What I don’t get is why they were playing a game with me. Run down the two guys and see what they know. Tell them they could be targets. Made sure Station’s sister knows that too.”

“She already does,” she said. “I just had a wild thought.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe there’s been some kind of grand plan in place all along to lure you down to Haiti.”

“For what purpose?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

43

Day Six

June 9

Monday Afternoon

Teffinger came up with a plan; a crazy, dangerous plan; a plan that would probably kill him, but at least it was something. The question at this point is whether he should do it now, this afternoon under light of day, or wait until dark.

Dark make more sense, a lot more sense.

Still, every minute that passed was another strike against Modeste. The clicks of her clock were limited. He paced and then hunted down Angel.

“I need a place where I can keep a prisoner,” he said.

“Who?”

“Janjak.”

She smiled, anticipating the punch line, and then grew serious when it didn’t come.

“You’re not kidding.”

Teffinger shook his head.

“I can’t be here. They’ll look for her here.”

Ten minutes later they were in the Boston Whaler, cruising on plane into open turquoise waters. Forty-five minutes later they came to a string of three small islands or cays, none bigger than five or six acres, all within a few hundred yards of one another. They circled around and through, finding hypnotic pristine beaches and swaying palms but not a single sign of human life, not now or from the past, stretching all the way back to the beginning of time

“No one comes here,” Angel said. “They’re cursed.”

“By who?”

“Sea ghosts, if you believe the rumor.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“These used to be rocky crags,” she said. “No one ever came here. The ghosts slowly transformed them over time, turning them into paradises. No one could pass by without stopping. The ghosts made bait out of beauty.”

“Bait for what? Murder?”

She shrugged.

“All anyone knows for sure is that people disappear, boats disappear. There are stories of bad things, supernatural things, things where souls got dragged under the water and were made to live forever with no air.”

“So why are you bringing me here?”

“Because you don’t believe the stories.”

“What about you?”

“I believe lots of boats ran aground here in the dark waters over time and that lots of people unquestionably died,” she said. “I believe that rumors can start from events like that.”

Teffinger maneuvered the vessel between the three islands, out of sight of open waters, and trimmed the engines up as he drifted into a beach. The bow nestled into the sand. He tied it off with an anchor, just to be sure, then made his way through the lukewarm water to the dry sand of the beach.

Angel hesitated in the boat.

Then she jumped in the water and joined him.

The beach was pristine and under other circumstances Teffinger could have spent the rest of his life right there with no regrets. The opposite side of the island was no more than a couple of hundred yards over.

They cut across.

Halfway there they came across a human skull lying in the sand. Teffinger picked it up and bounced it in his hand to get a feel for the weight and said, “Here’s one of your lost sailors.”

“I don’t think so. Look.”

He did.

Thirty feet away was a pile of bones, a large pile, human skeletons, with twenty or thirty easily identified skulls. None contained flesh.

“Looks like a body dump of some kind,” Teffinger said. “Not recently though. These have been here for years, maybe decades.”

Angel kept her distance and said, “We should get out of here.”

“Are these your ghosts?”

“I don’t know.”

Teffinger dropped the skull and kept going.

“Let’s see what else we have.”

What they had for the rest of the island was nature uninterrupted, nature strutting her stuff with all the passion and mystery and eroticism she could command.

“Let’s check the other two islands,” Teffinger said.

As they passed by the bones on the way back, Angel pointed to something and said, “What’s that?”

Teffinger looked.

It was something in the middle of it all, peeking out from under the sand, barely protruding but visible nonetheless, possibly an old belt buckle or the tip of a weapon.

He picked his way through the bones, trying to not step on any but finding them too dense too avoid, feeling the crunch of their once-meaningful fibers shoot up his legs and into his heart.

The object was small and golden.

He wedged it out of the sand.

What it was he couldn’t believe.

“A gold coin.”

He tossed it to Angel, looked for more in the sand, found nothing and picked his way out.

“It looks Spanish,” Angel said.

“Yes it does.”

“What do you think it’s worth?”

“More than my soul.”

“So what’s it doing just laying there in the sand?” Angel shifted her footing and ran her eyes over the gluttony of bones. “Maybe there was some kind of pirate fight over bags of gold and that kind of thing. This one got dropped when someone was running.”

Teffinger chewed on it.

“That’s possible,” he said.

“It’s probably been peeking in and out of the sand for a hundred years. We happened by at the exact right time. I told you there was such a thing as fate. It’s our first possession together. We share it, right? Fifty-fifty?”

“It’s all yours,” Teffinger said. “But if there’s more, we’ll share them.”

“You think there’s more?”

He nodded.

“You bury treasure in the sand in a crate or chest of some kind,” he said. “It’s going to be wooden; possibly reinforced with steel bands and a padlock, but at least to some extent wooden. Time takes its toll. The wood rots and disintegrates. Now the treasure is loose in the sand. Trees grow and roots push things around under the surface. Some of those things get pushed up. Like that little guy, for instance.”

“So what are all the bodies for? A marker?”

He nodded.

“A marker and a deterrent,” he said. “What’s the last place on this island you’d want to poke around in?”

“Right there.”

“Exactly.”

He rolled his sleeves up and started picking bones out and throwing them to the side. Angel watched for a few heartbeats and then joined in.

“I want to make love to you right there in the middle,” she said.

Teffinger smiled.

“You’re a kinky little thing.”

“You have no idea.”

He slapped her ass.

“Maybe that’s what all these bodies are,” he said. “Maybe they all had the exact same idea. Did you ever think of that?”

She slapped him back.

“You’re not getting out of it so don’t even try.”

44

Day Six

June 9

Monday Afternoon

The next three hours changed the whole world. As Teffinger predicted—but still to his shock—hundreds of gold coins were buried under the bones, ranging from depths of two to five feet down; 328 precious little golden pieces of history, all told. If they widened the circle they’d probably find a hundred more but that was enough for now. They replaced the sand and the bones, made everything look as undisturbed and original as possible, then collapsed in the shade on their backs as the warm cerulean sky played through the palms.

“Half are yours,” Teffinger said. “A hundred sixty nine.”

“I don’t like to think of it like that,” Angel said. “I like to think of it as three twenty eight, ours together.”

“I already have a plan for my share.”

“What is what?”

“Use them to get Modeste back.”

“You’re going to give them to Janjak?”

“Some of them,” he said. “I’m not sure how many yet.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t see why you’re going to such extremes,” she said. “The woman played you. You owe her nothing.”

“I’m all she has.”

“Yeah, but you don’t owe her anything. Do you hear what I’m saying?”

He got to his feet and pulled Angel up.

They took off their shirts and split the coins, one going into hers then one into his, until they were all divided. Teffinger stuck ten coins in his pocket, tied his shirt off and said, “Stay here.”

“Where you going?”

He dangled the shirt.

“To bury this on one of the other islands.”

“Why?”

“To keep it safe.”

“I’m not coming with you?”

He shook his head.

“It’s better you don’t know where I’m doing it. That could save your life later.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I trust you just fine,” he said. “It’s other people I don’t trust. Stay here.”

He made his way to the Boston Whaler, which fired up exactly as it was supposed to, and then motored over to the farther of the other two islands. There he found something he didn’t expect—another large grouping of fleshless skeletons, even larger than the first, with a good forty or fifty skulls showing.

He didn’t like the looks of it.

He didn’t like the island at all.

It had an eerie patina to it, nothing he could put a finger on but something that didn’t resonate well in his gut. He left and went to the other island.

There he found no skeletons.

He found a place to his liking, one he could remember, and buried his shirt three feet deep. The sand went back and then got smoothed out until the dig turned invisible.

Back at the first island, Angel was waiting for him on the beach, meaning she clearly saw where he was coming from. She waded out waist deep into the aqua waters, tossed her shirt in the boat and then climbed in.

He said, “Any ghosts get you?”

She gave him a wet kiss on the lips.

“Only you. You’re a ghost, aren’t you?”

“You never know.”

Two minutes later they were out in open waters on full plane with the wind in their hair and the pounding of the hull in their ears.

Halfway back Teffinger said, “It’s best that no one knows anything about any of this for the time being. Put your coins someplace safe but don’t tell anyone about them. That includes Rail.”

“That’s my plan.”

“Good. I don’t want to find out they’re cursed.”