Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order) (4 page)

“Whoa!”

“What happened?”

“She almost got hit! A red car just slammed to a stop and almost took her out! I’m looking at the driver. It’s a white girl, a teenager with punk hair—pink. Three guys are in the car with her. They’re all wearing black. It’s fading. It’s gone now. I’m out.” She swallowed. “I think he knew I was there.”

Teffinger pulled Station’s business card out of his wallet and dialed her cell. She answered on the second ring. “It’s me, Teffinger. Where are you?”

“Walking home.”

“On the mall?”

“Yes.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Why?”

“Just indulge me.”

“Shorts.”

“What color?”

“White.”

“Are you wearing a black T-shirt too?”

“Yes.”

“Did a car almost hit you?”

Silence.

“Are you following me or something?”

“No, just answer the question.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At California.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m okay, it didn’t hit me.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at,” he said. “Describe the car.”

“It was red, an older Camry I think.”

“Who was inside?”

“Teenagers,” she said. “A girl and three boys.”

“Was the girl driving?”

“Yes. She skidded to a stop. I’m okay.”

“Tell me about her?”

“She was punked up, with pink hair. I don’t understand what’s going on?”

“Look behind you,” he said. “See if someone’s following you about thirty steps behind.”

“There are a lot of people.”

“It would be a man by himself,” Teffinger said.

“A guy just turned off. He stared at me for a second when I looked at him and then he veered off.”

“Don’t follow him! What’s he wearing?”

“A red baseball hat, sunglasses, jeans.”

“What about the shirt?”

“It’s green. He looks strong. A shuttle just stopped right next to me.”

“Get on it and get out of there!”

Teffinger hung up, grabbed Kovi-Ke’s hand and headed for the mall at a trot.

“What kind of car almost hit Station?”

“It was older,” she said. “A Camry I think.” Then she pointed. “There it is! That’s it right there!”

It was right next to them, stopped at a light.

Inside was a punked-out blond and three guys in black.

Teffinger stopped long enough to memorize the license plate and then kept going.

10

Day Two

June 5

Thursday Afternoon

The afternoon was a flurry of motion but whether that motion was forwards or backwards only time would tell. Station hired two security men—guys personally known to Teffinger—and promised to keep them with her day and night until Teffinger said otherwise.

The man following Station was long gone by the time Teffinger got there. Several security cameras in the area shinned on the guy but none showed his face thanks to the baseball cap. They did show that his arms were pythons and his chest was steel. In a fair fight Teffinger would be able to hold his own but not for long.

Was he Tarzan?

It was possible.

It was very possible.

Tarzan’s mane could have been tucked up under the hat, or cut off by this point, although Teffinger doubted the later. The mane was too much a part of Tarzan’s being. He’d cut off an ear before the mane.

Had Kovi-Ke actually seen through the eyes of the guy?

The details were extensive and verified by security cameras, including Station stopping to look in a window and taking off her sunglasses, almost getting hit by the Camry at California, and wearing the clothes as described. She’d snuck out the back of the building; that’s why Kovi-Ke didn’t see her leave. She’d changed into different clothes before she left.

Teffinger didn’t want to believe it was possible.

His initial inclination was to look for something that could be explained. Possibly Station and Kovi-Ke were in some kind of conspiracy with each other. While good in theory, the facts didn’t pan out. When Teffinger questioned Station about whether she knew Kovi-Ke, the concept was so strange that the woman didn’t even know how to respond.

No, no, no.

She didn’t know Kovi-Ke.

She had no idea what was going on.

The truth of what she was saying resonated in Teffinger’s gut.

She wasn’t lying.

Also, there was the little fact that Station almost got run over crossing California. Even if Station and Kovi-Ke were in some type of cahoots for some unexplained reason, that external incident was seen by Kovi-Ke in real time and was unexplainable unless the punk girl driver was also in the mix. From the license plate, Teffinger tracked her down and interviewed her. She didn’t know Station or Kovi-Ke and wasn’t part of the mix. She was just an art student who got a little reckless while driving and that was the beginning and end of it.

No, there was no conspiracy going on.

Early evening alone in the office, Teffinger was surprised when the door opened and Sydney walked in. “Got something you’ll be interested in,” she said.

“Like what.”

She dropped three pieces of paper on his desk and then took a seat as he read them.

They appeared to be a police report filed by Kovi-Ke in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in February of this year, four months ago. According to the report, she was drugged and abducted from something called Karnaval and taken to some remote beach location for some type of hard-core voodoo ritual that lasted all night. She was finally dumped in the trunk of a car and released naked and traumatized just outside the city an hour before the sun came up. She never good a good look at anyone involved, with the exception of one man who approached her just as she was starting to lose consciousness; the guy who abducted her; a nice-looking guy with dreadlocks.

Teffinger looked up.

“Is this real?”

“Yes.”

Teffinger dropped the papers.

“Kovi-Ke said her visions started three months ago. That would have been a month after this happened.”

“You think she was cursed or something?”

Teffinger shook his head.

“I don’t know what to think.”

Sydney’s phone rang. She listened, hung up and said, “Okay, that call you got from Tarzan this afternoon, it was from one of those pre-paid jobs, purchased with cash in Miami two months ago. Here’s the interesting part. The call was placed from Denver.”

Teffinger nodded.

“So, he’s in town.”

“It looks that way.”

Miami.

Miami.

Miami.

Why did the word bounce in Teffinger’s brain?

Then it came to him.

That’s where the stomach girl was murdered two years ago.

Miami.

“Tarzan’s the guy stalking Station,” he said. “Let’s get a BOLO out on him, statewide.”

“You want to do it or do you want me to?”

Teffinger stood up.

“You do it. I’m going to make a run.”

“To where?”

“It’s better you don’t know.”

11

Day Two

June 5

Thursday Night

Teffinger got home just before dark to find a surprise, namely Kovi-Ke sitting on his front steps. He handed her the Haiti police report, unlocked the front door and stepped in.

She followed.

“Did you make that report?”

“Yes.”

“What it says there, did it really happen?”

“Yes.”

He exhaled.

“Tell me about it.”

With that, she told him a story so detailed it was as if he was right there.

* * * * *

After passing out at Karnaval, she regained consciousness at some point later, which could have been two minutes or two days, to find herself on her back on sand in the middle of the night, staked out inside a ring of torches. Drums beat but they weren’t Karnaval drums. They were evil. They pounded with a devil’s hand.

She pulled wildly at her bonds.

The ropes dug into her wrists and ankles, ready to tear her flesh if she pulled even a breath harder. She put every muscle of her body into it.

The ropes didn’t budge.

They drew blood.

They had her.

They had her good.

Her chest pounded.

The torches were blinding suns in her eyes making it almost impossible to see beyond. Still, she was able to catch fleeting glimpses of painted faces, demon masks and crazed dancing. The men were bare-chested. The women were too, shaking their breasts and hips with a possessed abandon.

She was in some kind of voodoo ritual.

She’d heard about them.

There were rumors all throughout the Caribbean.

They had always had been there, even when she was little.

She’d never believed them or, if she had, thought they were nothing more than exaggerations of scary things out of the past, put into young minds where they fermented and hardened and turned into dark places where they dared not go even as adults.

Suddenly a hand appeared from behind her and held her head immobile. Another hand pulled her jaw down and her mouth open. A snake appeared above her, dangled from above with its fangs mere inches from her eyes.

It lingered there, second after second after second, twisting for its life.

Then a machete swung from out of the shadows and lopped the head off.

It bounced off her nose and fell to the side.

The body above stopped wiggling. Blood and guts dripped out, at first into her eyes, then onto her lips and into her mouth.

She pulled at the ropes with all her strength.

It did no good.

12

Day Two

June 5

Thursday Night

Teffinger’s blood raced. “I asked you point blank before if anything happened in your life like an accident or someone dying or something like that,” he said. “You said no.” Kovi-Ke’s eyes darted. “You lied to me. You lied right to my face.”

“So what was I supposed to say? That I got some kind of a voodoo curse put on me?”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

She shrugged.

“If I said that, you’d think I was even crazier than you already thought I was. You wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Station would be dead by now.”

Teffinger pulled two beers from the fridge, handed one to Kovi-Ke and took a long ice-cold swallow from his. His brain softened. The pressure in his veins reigned back.

Kovi-Ke wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest.

“The Caribbean isn’t the United States,” she said. “It’s old and superstitious, there are secrets there, and there’s a darkness that covers that whole part of the world like a blanket. It has things, evil things, that can’t be explained and shouldn’t be real but probably are.”

“Like voodoo?”

“The stories are always there and always have been there,” she said. “You hear them since you were a kid. I never believed them, at least not in the logical part of my brain. There’s a deep part of your soul though where they get in and never come out. It would be hard to understand if you didn’t grow up with it.”

Teffinger took a long swallow.

“We have the same thing here,” he said. “It’s called the boogieman.”

Kovi-Ke shook her head.

“Don’t patronize me. This is different. A lot of people in that part of the world—all kinds of people, including respected ones—believe in voodoo and occult and shadows. They talk about it. They embrace it or accept it or avoid it, but either way it’s something real. Like I said, I never really fully believed in it. I’m still not sure I do.”

“Even after the curse?”

“I’m not sure I was cursed.”

“Then how do you see through someone’s eyes? What other explanation is there?”

“I’m not saying that what’s happening to me now doesn’t go back to that night,” she said. “It has to. You’re right, there is no other explanation. What I’m saying is, I’m not sure the curse was on me. The more I think about it, the more I think it was on him.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’ve been put in motion to bring him down. I’m the devil of death as far as he’s concerned.”

Teffinger drained what as left of the beer and pulled another. “Put in motion by who?”

“Unknown.”

“You must have some idea,” Teffinger said.

She took a sip of beer, made a face and set it on the table. Then she lit a joint and inhaled long and deep.

“When I made the police report, I knew before I even left the building that nothing would ever come of it. They went through motions afterwards, as if they were investigating, but they weren’t.”

“And why not?”

“My guess? Because they were scared.”

“Of what?”

“Repercussions; I’m not sure what kind—curses, murder, devils, burning in hell, who knows what. Make up whatever you want, something real though. Something deep down that they can’t deny.”

“Did you ever tell them you could see through someone’s eyes?”

She shook her head.

“That didn’t start for a month afterwards so I had nothing to say when I made the report. Afterwards, like I said, they didn’t want anything to do with it.”

Teffinger opened an image on his cell phone, an image of a man six-four with a chiseled body, rugged jungle looks and a long mane of thick blond hair.

“Have you ever seen this guy?”

“No.”

“Look carefully, his hair might be cut off now or dyed.”

“I’ve never seen him,” she said. “I can guarantee you that. I’m good with faces. Is that Tarzan?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I’m seeing through his eyes.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.” She paused and added, “What’d he do, anyway?”

Teffinger hardened his face.

“I’m not at liberty to get into it.”

“Come on, Teffinger. I showed you mine. Show me yours.”

“I’ll tell you after he makes me kill him.”

“And when will that be?”

“Hopefully, tonight.”

Outside the wind kicked up.

Dark clouds were blowing in.

A storm was in the making.

“This is good,” he said.

“Why?”

“It fits the night that’s about to be.” He swallowed what was left of his beer. “I’m going to take a shower. Then I’m going to go to Tarzan’s and wait for him. You’re going to stay here.”

“No I’m not,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”

Teffinger shook his head.

“Out of the question.”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” she said. “Maybe it is his eyes that I see out of. If that’s true, I might get a flash. It might save your life.”

“I don’t care about my life all that much.”

“Well, then you’re alone in that regard. I’m coming with you. You can either take me or I’ll go there on my own. I know where it’s at, remember? Either way, I’m going.”

Two minutes later Teffinger stepped into the shower, got the water as hot as he could stand it and let the questions bounce in his brain. One grew larger than the others.

Was Kovi-Ke going to kill him tonight?

13

Day Two

June 5

Thursday Night

After dark Teffinger parked the Tundra a-quarter mile away from Tarzan’s lair and stepped out into a black, nasty storm. Lightning arced across an evil sky, strobe-lighting eerie industrial silhouettes. He hunched against the weather, already soaked. The beers that tasted so good earlier in the evening now sat dull and dead in his gut. His body ached. His eyes wanted to close and stay that way for the rest of his life.

He fought through it all.

At the building he entered through the same place as this afternoon, then climbed the stairs in the dark without a flashlight to the top floor, made his way to the far corner and slumped down.

He was alone.

Kovi-Ke wasn’t with him.

He wasn’t about to bring a civilian into a potentially dangerous situation.

The corner felt good.

It was safe.

The radiant warmth of the day still resonated there.

Tarzan was a ladies’ man. He could charm a woman even as strong and exotic as Kovi-Ke. Plus they’d both arrived in Denver at the same time, give or take. Because of that alone, Teffinger couldn’t discount that maybe the two of them were in some kind of a conspiracy. But if so, to do what?

To kill him?

He shook his head.

Why was he always jumping to the worst-case scenario? Why was he hell-bent on believing Kovi-Ke was out to get him? Sure, he had facts that pointed that way, but in his gut he couldn’t deny that something deeper was at work.

He could love her.

He could do it completely and absolutely.

That scared him.

He’d be vulnerable.

A sound came, barely audible over the storm but something out of step with the rest of the night, something that didn’t belong, maybe something innocent from the rail yard but just as easily maybe something more sinister. He held his breath and focused.

It didn’t reappear, not in five seconds or ten or a full minute.

He couldn’t make it come back.

Devil of death.

Kovi-Ke’s words hadn’t left Teffinger’s brain, not once since she uttered them; not because they were so strangely poetic but because they represented a theory that might actually be in play. It was possible that the curse—to the extent there really was one—was on the man instead of Kovi-Ke. Either way, whoever put the curse into motion knew who the man was. Whoever orchestrated the night of voodoo knew who the man was.

Wait a minute, maybe he didn’t.

Maybe he or she or they knew of the man but didn’t know his exact identity. Maybe that’s why they brought Kovi-Ke into the mix, to find out who he was.

Still, they had some kind of connection to him.

They had pieces of the puzzle.

Teffinger checked his watch, added two hours and concluded that the FBI profiler, Dr. Leigh Sandt, had long since gone to bed.

He called her anyway.

“I know I’m waking you up and I’m going to hell for it,” he said.

“Teffinger?”

“I need to know something. Do we have any people in Haiti that I can tap?”

“If you mean FBI, no.”

“How about CIA?”

“I’m sure there’s CIA there but that’s not my circle.”

“Can you get me a name and number?”

“God, Teffinger—”

Suddenly a noise came from down below, somewhere inside the building. Teffinger killed the power on the phone, stood up and drew his gun.

Then he stood perfectly still.

14

Day Two

June 5

Thursday Night

The beam of a flashlight bounced off the walls, making its way up the final stairs and into the room. Teffinger’s heart raced.

“Teffinger!”

The voice wasn’t rough.

It was Jamaican.

“Over here,” he said.

The light shinned on him, then dropped out of his eyes and onto the floor as it made its way over. Then it went out. Kovi-Ke wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, “Looks like I was telling the truth about coming.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Teffinger said. “Now I have to abort.”

“Go ahead but I’m staying here.”

Teffinger exhaled.

“This isn’t a game.”

She held her arms out and said, “Search me.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have a gun, I don’t have a knife, I don’t even have a paperclip,” said.

“Why would I care?”

“We both know why. Do it.”

He did it, running his hands over her body, at first all business, then more personal, more private, more in a way that made her spread her legs ever so slightly.

“I’m not in town to kill you,” she said. “Get used to the idea.”

“I never said you were.”

“You thought it.” A beat then, “I made love to you this morning, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I noticed.”

“So what’d you think, that that was some kind of a black widow thing?”

“No.”

“Don’t be afraid of me,” she said. “It hurts me when you are.”

Teffinger wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight. Her chest beat against his, the wetness of her clothes felt like a thousand ancient genes running through his blood.

He kissed her.

It was wrong.

The timing was bad.

He didn’t care.

She kissed him back, deeper, longer, suddenly an animal, not to be denied for even a second longer. She ripped his shirt open, then her own, and pressed her breasts against him.

The storm pounded down with an aching fury.

Lightning flashed.

Every molecule in Teffinger’s brain exploded.

He dropped to his knees and yanked down her shorts.

Then a sound came, not from them, from below, somewhere down in the guts of the building, a sound that could have been a crowbar or piece of rebar dropping to the floor.

He froze.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

He pulled his gun and said, “Stay here. Don’t move from this spot. I need to know exactly where you are. Tell me!”

“I’ll stay here.”

He kissed her, made his way to the stairs and headed down on slow cat feet.

His heart pounded.

Tarzan could kill him in a fair fight.

It couldn’t get to that point.

Not for a second.

The third floor was blacker than black when he got to it. Unlike the top floor, the windows were minimal. The thickness of the storm beat away the few lights that otherwise could have shined in from the rail yard. He might as well have been a hundred miles under the ground in a locked vault.

No sounds came.

No flashlights flickered.

He headed lower, to the second floor.

It was a repeat, dark and lifeless.