Pandora 2: Death is not an Option (7 page)

With the corners of his mouth curling slightly up, the man at last opened his mouth for the first time. “Hello. My name is Carlos.”

He looked down and sorted through his tools. Finally, he picked up what looked like a chrome handle with a rather large fishhook
attached. Looking back at Vince with the same unnerving expression, he took two steps up to him and, grabbing his hair with a surprisingly strong grip, tilted his head back.

“I’m sorry Vince,” he said, “but this is really going to hurt.”

The morning was becoming a little overcast when Manny came up to Tommy. “We’ve looked everywhere,” Manny complained. “Searched near the waterfront where he was supposed to be last night and then widened our search to all the surrounding blocks. Regina and her people, even Sean and his, searched all over. It’s as if the night just swallowed Vince up. There is no trace of him.”

“Jesus Christ, he must be somewhere,” said the frustrated Tommy. “He wouldn’t have just run off. Not Vince. He really was looking forward to the voyage to Antigua.”

“I know,” said Manny. “Vince is not the AWOL type.”

They were standing in the street talking while all the activity went on around them. Suddenly, Mike came running up to them. “Hey, Tommy,” he called.

Tommy and Manny ran to meet him. “What did you find out?” asked the concerned sergeant.

“On a whim, Malik took a walk along that long, deserted dock at the end of the wharf area,” Mike said breathlessly.

“And?” Tommy impatiently asked.

“Malik said he found several spots of blood at the end of the peer,” Mike stated. “From their consistency, he suspects that they’re not very old.”

Throwing his sweat-stained fatigue cap on the ground, Tommy yelled, “Fuck.” With his hands on his hips and his head down, Tommy said, “Shit,” and, reaching down to snatch his cover back up, continued. “I bet anything that our scary friend in the warehouse was part of this ‘snatch and grab mission’ last night. Fuck! Right under our noses. They were after info on Jake’s boat, and when we took him, they grabbed one of ours. Shit. This screws things up royally.”

“Let’s go talk to our friend again,” suggested Manny.

“Nah,” spat Tommy disgustedly, “he’s not gonna talk. You could probably cut his balls off and he’d just smile at you. Wasted effort.”

“Yeah,” said Manny, “but knowing he took Vince, I’d sure like to try.”

Shaking his head, Tommy said, “No, we will need him whole to use as a bargaining chip. I have a feeling that guy is more than just your bargain-basement hired help.”

Two hours later, Tommy, Manuel, Sean, and Regina were huddled together talking over their options when Del walked up and said to them, “Hey, Mel Gorman sent me. He said for me to tell you that a speedboat is heading for the marina.”

They all scrambled and ran out of the former accountant’s office they were working in. They quickly followed Del down to the marina. As they arrived, they saw a sleek speedboat circling in and heading to the end of one of the piers. Sean, Tommy, Manny, and Regina walked warily down the pier toward the approaching boat. There were two
people on board. When they got closer to it, Regina said, “Holy shit. That’s Bouchard. What is he doing here?”

The boat turned in so that it was next to the dock but with a little space between and facing back out toward the gulf. The driver of the boat had shaggy blond hair and an unshaven face. He was dressed in old jeans and a ragged, plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off. In contrast to him, the other man looked as if he’d stepped out of a magazine. He had long, dark hair flowing past his shoulders and blowing in the breeze. Sean, oddly, thought,
Fabio
. He had a neatly manicured and sculpted beard. With tight black jeans, knee boots, and a ridiculous puffy-sleeved gold shirt, he looked as if he had just finished posing for the Captain Morgan rum bottle. All that was missing was the eyepatch and a parrot. Why, the fucker was even carrying a sword.

Tommy walked to the end of the dock. “Trick-or-treat, kid. Isn’t it a month early for Halloween?”

Bouchard, with one booted foot on the side of the boat, smiled and called out, “Ahoy there, matey.”

“Oh, for the love of—”Sean started.

“I think you have something of mine,” Bouchard continued. “I want him back.”

“Oh, yeah?” retorted Tommy. “And I think you have one of my men.”

“And we want him back,” yelled Regina.

“’Tis a possibility, mon cher,” replied Bouchard, still smiling. “Why don’t you send my friend out to me, and I’ll take him off your hands for you.”

“You’ll get him when we get Vince back,” stated Tommy.

“Ah yes…Vince,” Bouchard said, nodding his head as if reminiscing. “A good lad. Strong stock, as they say. No, I don’t think that arrangement works for me. Just bring my man out. Quit dicking around, and I’ll be on my merry way. I’ll have your man brought to the same spot.”

“Fat chance of that happening,” an angry Tommy sneered. “If you don’t bring Vince here, right fucking now, you’ll never see your friend again.”

Darkness passed over Bouchard’s face. That brief but telling look showed Tommy the real kind of man he was dealing with. The pirate pasted the smile back onto his face again. It was a smile in name only; it held as much warmth as a bucket of ice.

“Oh well.” Bouchard shrugged. “I guess we have no deal then. A shame. I hope you will have no problem with my man, Corso. He’s a very mean, nasty fellow. Certainly not as warm and fuzzy as moi.”

As he stepped back down off the speedboat’s starboard side, Sean called out to him, “What about Vince?”

“Ah, Vincent. Yes. You know, he was very distraught about the unprofessional way he was taken so easily. Tsk, tsk. Sleeping on the job, messieurs, not a very good way for a professional to behave. You know, he was so upset that he had, uh, lost face with his teammates. It is not good for a soldier to do that.”

The group on the dock, especially Tommy and Manny, were steaming. Both sergeants had grim, dark expressions on their faces and their lips compressed tightly.

“So,” said Bouchard, bending down and picking up a wooden box tied with heavy string, “Vince asked me to give this to you as a small repayment for his unfortunate loss of face with his comrades.” The smiling Bouchard raised his eyebrows. “Will someone do me the honor?” He raised the box up toward the dock. Manny looked around and saw a boat hook, grabbed it, and reached out. Deftly hooking the cord that wrapped around the wood, he gently guided it back and placed it on the deck.

“Enough of these bons mots, mons amis. Au revoir.” Bouchard nodded to his driver and sat down as the speedboat raced away, turning to return to the far side of the island.

As he sped off, the group gathered around the wooden box. Almost reluctantly, Manny bent and started untying the string.

“Maybe it’s a bomb,” said Sean. “Shouldn’t we wait?”

Manny paused. Tommy said, “No. Open it. If this is from Vince, I want to see it.”

Continuing to untie the cord, Manny finally freed the box and pried the lid off. Everyone curiously bent over to see the contents of the box. Manny took the lid and set it aside. As Tommy bent down also, Manny pushed aside the paper covering on top. Inside, stretched and tacked to a dismantled mannequin’s head, was the masklike face and scalp of Vince Pasko. It was attached as neatly and precisely as if someone was making a horror movie prop.

The sad, young Pvt. Pasko was never going to Antigua and never connecting with his wife’s memory again.

Mike and Malik came running up to Regina as she stood in front of a boarded-up surf shop giving orders to a group of police officers.

“We heard what happened,” Mike interrupted. “Where are Tommy and Sean?”

Regina finished assigning tasks, and the officers scattered to their posts. Turning to Mike with a pained and deeply troubled look on her face, she said, “Tommy went to tell the rest of his squad what happened, and Sean is still puking in the bushes.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Malik.

“I think Bouchard answered that question for us,” she said cryptically. “Get everyone together and bring them to the hotel lobby. We need to end this problem now.”

Across the city on its northern side, the speedboat pulled up to the dock, and Bouchard stepped off the idling boat.

“Stay with the boat,” he commanded and then walked off toward the large house he was using as his Key West headquarters.

Tank was standing in front, talking with a bunch of men. As Bouchard strolled up, smiling, Tank turned to him and asked, “Where’s Corso?”

“He ain’t coming,” Bouchard said gruffly. “Looks like you may have gotten a promotion. Come in with me.”

Bouchard entered the house with Tank following behind. He went to the bar in the corner of the great room and poured the two of them a drink.

Taking the offered whiskey with an uncomfortable smile, Tank asked, “They wouldn’t give up Corso?”

Tilting his head to gulp down the fiery liquor, the self-proclaimed pirate king smacked his lips and smiled at Tank. “Nah. But I didn’t think they would anyway. Lousy luck he was caught. Maybe when we go back there, we could get him back again. Assuming they don’t put a bullet in his brain before then. For now, you’re assuming his command. I want you to get Paulo, Jerry, and Gooch and bring them to me. It’s time we got this party rolling. Go.”

Tank lumbered out the door. A few minutes later, there was a knock, and Carlos Guzman entered. “How’d it go, jefe?”

“Like I expected, Carlos. I just wish I could have stayed to see their reaction.” Bouchard started to chuckle, then cackle, and finally broke into loud bellows of laughter. After the laughing fit subsided, he wiped his eyes, still chuckling and said, “Lost face…oh, that’s priceless. Ha, ha! Boy, I am one funny dude.”

Tommy looked at everyone seated around the large conference table in one of the side business-meeting rooms the hotel offered. Everyone there looked grim and determined.

“We’ve worried about this fucker Bouchard long enough,” Tommy stated. “It’s time we ended this problem and ended him. He thinks he just intimidated us into cowering in our holes, but he has a rude awakening in store. It’s starting to pour outside, and it looks like it will be a real tropical storm tonight. They won’t be expecting anything. So tonight we’re going on a search-and-destroy mission and kill every one of those scumbag pirate fucks. They all just signed their own death warrants.”