The tourist agency consortium estimated at least twenty people had met their end at the hands of the pirates in the past year. In their continuing effort to keep the lid on, the Bahamian cops had classified these people as simply missing persons or unrecoverable accidental drownings, basically making them instant cold cases. But BABE knew better.
Twitch found the pattern they were looking for. After going over the records of the missing victims, he noticed that more than half of them shared two things in common: one, they were leasing boats in the Bahamas at the time of their disappearance; and two, there was no record of how they got to the Bahamas in the first place. No tickets bought from regular commercial airlines, no evidence of passage on any cruise ships or ferries. But because these people were going to pick up their chartered boats, they
had
to get to the islands somehow.
A charter flight was one way to do this. So Twitch started a search of every small airline flying between Florida and the Bahamas. A whiz at busting through firewalls and hacking files from the Internet, he got into the flight records at Fort Lauderdale airport, and one name kept popping up: Colonel Cat.
It turned out that on more than a few occasions over the past year, Cat had flown customers to the islands shortly before the Muy Capaz struck—in some cases, just hours before a pirate attack.
More damning, though, was that on those same occasions, the very thing Cat had tried to avoid—leaving a paper trail—actually tripped him up. Scuba divers, deep-sea fishermen, people wanting to fly over the mysterious Bimini Road—all these people paid him freely with credit cards or checks.
But the passengers Cat took up around the times of the Muy Capaz’s crimes? They must have all paid in cash, because there were no receipts. No paper trail. The absence of evidence was the evidence itself.
Cat had outsmarted himself.
By connecting the dots on dates close to a Muy Capaz crime wave, Twitch estimated twelve of the pirates’ victims might have been on Cat’s antique airplane at some point.
That was more than half, and that meant it was more than coincidence. After that, the rest was easy. Whiskey hired Cat’s plane, then beat the shit out of him, and he eventually sang like a canary.
So far, so good.
But then they realized not
everything
they’d heard at the BABE briefing was adding up.
For instance, while interrogating Colonel Cat, they’d discovered—much to their surprise—that the Muy Capaz had hit three more yachts just the night before, each time with Cat’s help.
But there was no full moon the previous night; in fact, the moon was barely waxing at half. So much for the “Wolfman Complex.”
Even stranger, at one point, when they were beating the daylights out of Cat, and Batman asked him how deeply was he involved in voodoo, the pilot actually laughed in their faces. He told them the only voodoo he was involved with went up his nose or into his veins.
Well, no matter, Batman thought now as he pushed the old airplane past 12,000 feet and continued to climb. Every mission had its twists and turns, its intangibles. Timeline or not, voodoo angle or not, they were still on a good pace to wrap up these Capaz monkeys, get paid by BABE, and then spend a little time enjoying the fruits of their labor on a warm beach somewhere.
So what if it didn’t come all wrapped in a bow?
What in life did?
* * *
THE PIRATE NAMED Jumbey had never flown so high.
He’d been on Colonel Cat’s plane on four occasions, going to and from raids on the yachts or while they were taking care of witnesses. But on those flights, he could clearly recall looking out the plane’s observation blisters and seeing the ocean or land just below him, no more than a thousand feet away.
Now, they were flying so high, he couldn’t see the earth—land or water—below him at all. It was also cold inside the airplane, and it was rattling and coughing and seemed to be bouncing all over the sky.
But creature comforts were the least of Jumbey’s worries at the moment.
He was lying on the deck of the passenger compartment, still bleeding from his wounds, his hands and legs tied with multiple strips of duct tape. His head was jammed up right next to an observation blister; this was how he knew how high they were flying. But he couldn’t move. He could barely turn his head.
At one point, though, he realized by the voices bouncing back and forth in the cabin that the man with the hook hand was flying the airplane. He also knew that, besides the man with the eye patch, there were three other masked men in the cabin with him. All five of them were huge, wore military suits and carried large weapons and nightsticks. Beyond the cold, the rattling and the terrifying altitude, it was these men themselves who were scaring the shit out of him. They seemed capable of anything.
Colonel Cat was tied up on the floor right next to him.
“How did they know about us?” Jumbey managed to whisper desperately to the pilot. “We were always so careful to keep it all secret.”
“How the fuck do I know?” Cat spit back at him. “Maybe they’re fucking psychics.”
At that moment, Jumbey heard the man with the eye patch give an order to the three other masked men. Straining mightily to turn his head, Jumbey saw one man open the rear hatch of the airplane, while the two others grabbed Crabbie and dragged him over to the doorway. Jumbey and Cat were horrified.
“What’s your voodoo name?” one masked man asked Crabbie. But the pirate had no idea what he was talking about.
The man smacked him hard across his face.
“Why didn’t you wait until the full moon this time?”
Again, Crabbie was totally baffled by the question.
“I do not know what you mean,” he told the masked man.
The masked men didn’t ask Crabbie any more questions. One simply said to him: “You shouldn’t have killed all those people, mon. You shouldn’t have killed those cops.”
Then the largest man of the three simply picked Crabbie up off the floor and threw him out the open hatchway.
There was a look of complete bewilderment on the pirate’s face as he went out the door. Even as he was falling, everyone on the plane could hear him scream:
“What cops?”
Then the masked men turned toward Jumbey.
The young pirate started crying.
“What do you want from me?” he yelled. “I’ve only been hooked up with these guys for a month!”
“Tell us where your hideout is,” the large man demanded of him.
Jumbey became hysterical. “I don’t know, general. I’ve never even been there. That’s just for the senior crumbs.”
The large man started dragging Jumbey toward the open door.
“Better talk now,” he yelled at him.
But Jumbey could barely breathe, never mind talk.
“I don’t know!” he screamed again. “I’ve never been there! I’m just a new fish. That guy you just tossed?
He
was a senior man. He was there all the time!”
At that point, all the masked men looked at each other. They just realized they’d thrown the wrong guy out of the plane.
“So much for wrapping this up quickly,” one of them said.
The large man pulled Jumbey even closer to the open hatch. The wind was blowing madly. Jumbey looked down on the dark clouds and was terrified that he would have to pass through them before smashing into the water or the earth that he knew was somewhere way down below.
“Last chance,” the big man told him. “You must know
some way
we can find your boss.”
Jumbey looked out on the clouds again and, to his horror, imagined he could see Crabbie flying alongside the aircraft like a bird, bloody and laughing at him.
“I don’t,” he said, trembling. “I’ve never met him.”
The man pushed Jumbey halfway out the door.
“You got three seconds,” he growled. “One … two…”
“I don’t know!” Jumbey cried again. “I’m just a minnow. A little fish!”
“Good-bye,” the large man said.
He picked Jumbey off the floor and started to throw him out the hatchway.
“Badtown!” Jumbey finally yelled.
He was almost as good as gone—but then he felt the huge man pull him back in again.
“Badtown? What is that?”
“It’s a slum,” Jumbey said, trying mightily to catch his breath. “In Nassau. The whole city is a mess, but people call the worst part of it Badtown.”
“Your hideout is in Badtown?” the large man asked him.
“No,” Jumbey replied, still shaking all over. “Senior crumbs just hang out there sometimes when money is good.”
“
Where
in Badtown do they hang out?” another of the masked men demanded to know. “It must be a big place.”
Jumbey hesitated again—and the large man pushed him back toward the open door.
Finally Jumbey yelled, “The Tainted Lady.”
“Tainted Lady?” the large man asked. “What is that? A boat?”
“Don’t tell him!” Colonel Cat suddenly bellowed. “He’ll kill us!”
“
They’ll kill us!”
Jumbey yelled back at him.
He looked up at his would-be executioner.
“The Tainted Lady is a blind pig! A saloon, mon. There’s a hidden room upstairs where the top guys hang out sometimes. That’s all I know.”
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the floatplane landed in rough water next to an outer island so small it had just a single palm tree on it.
The masked men dragged Jumbey and Cat out of the plane and threw them, still bound in duct tape, onto the tiny beach. Then the masked men sloshed their way back to the airplane and climbed aboard.
Cat started screaming as he and Jumbey fought to rip the tape from their hands and feet. But there was so much of it, it was impossible.
“You can’t leave us here!” Cat yelled. “When the tide comes in, this place will be gone!”
“Climb the tree then,” one of the masked men told him.
“But … but we’re so far out, no one will ever find us!” Jumbey yelled.
The large man yelled back. “Them’s the breaks, mon.”
“But—my plane!” Cat screamed.
The large masked man yelled from the open door. “Oh yeah—thanks! We’ll take good care of it.”
With that, the Arado turned back toward the ocean, and with a burst of smoke and sea spray, took off and flew away.
7
BADTOWN WAS WELL named.
Dominating the southern end of Nassau, just over the hill from some of the most glamorous resorts in the western hemisphere, it was a collection of hovels, tin shacks, drug dens, and cafés that attracted more flies than people. Much of Nassau was a slum; Badtown was its most treacherous part. When cruise ships docking here warned their passengers to exercise caution while walking in the outlying neighborhoods at night, Badtown was the place they were talking about.
A canal connected this place to the sea. It was the conduit through which much of Badtown’s criminal activity flowed. Pot. Crack. Meth. Jewels. Guns. Just about anything and everything was for sale to adventurous tourists and addicted locals, if the price was right.
The busy season for Badtown’s drug trade was approaching. American college students on Spring Break would soon besiege the islands, and this meant dozens of pounds of coke and hundreds of pounds of pot could be sold in just one week.
These days, the people moving all these drugs around were, more often than not, the most feared, if most secretive pirate gang in the islands: the Muy Capaz.
* * *
OF THE TWO dozen bars in Badtown, most were little more than shacks with mud roofs. But one stood out, because it was made not of metal, but of stone.
It was as old as anything could be in this part of the Bahamas. Built more than two hundred years before by the British Army to house prostitutes close to one of its many forts, it was known then, as now, as the Tainted Lady.
The bar inside was as rundown as the building itself. Made of rotting wood from a nineteenth-century schooner, it was bordered by three shelves of bootleg liquor. There were a few tables, a few chairs and that was it. Cigarette smoke, pot smoke, spilled beer and blood combined to give the place a unique aroma. It was always dark inside, no matter what the time of day.
Just off the bar was a small room whose door was hidden behind a false wood panel. Few people knew the room existed. Inside it tonight were four members of the Muy Capaz. There were dressed badly even by Badtown standards, in stained, ragged shorts, dirty beach shirts and tattered straw hats. Each man had a gun in his belt and a machete by his side. Several bottles of rum sat on the table.
The pirates had been playing Cuban Poker since midnight. At about 2
A.M.
, the secret door opened and four heavily armed men came in. Everyone in the room froze. The four men weren’t rival gang members—they were bodyguards. Their sudden appearance could mean only one thing.
Another man walked in a few moments later. He was six-foot-two, with the build of an ex-boxer and the scars of an ex-con. He was dressed all in white, and his hands, cracked and rough, were an odd shade of red, as if they were permanently stained with blood.
He was Charles Black, the boss of the Muy Capaz.
This was not good—and the four pirates knew it. For Black to show himself in public was a rare event. He almost never left the gang’s secret hideout. His presence here meant something was wrong inside the world of the Muy Capaz.
And that could be bad for everybody.
* * *
BLACK’S MAIN SOURCE of income was buying and selling large quantities of pot and coke. His suppliers were from Jamaica; the business was strictly cash up front. Whenever Black and his men needed an injection of funds to get resupplied, they did what pirates do: They robbed vessels at sea. Turning that booty into money, they bought the drugs wholesale, and then resold them to mid-level dealers, most right here in Badtown, for a good profit.
The problem was, Black and his men were pirates from skin to bones. Like their predecessors of centuries past, they had something in their genes that caused them to be quickly separated from any extra money they came across. Despite their reputation for moving like ghosts when it came to committing crimes at sea, they were terrible businessmen. When they made a score, they would take the profits and hit Badtown hard. And whether their visit lasted several days or even a week or more, after a bender of booze, drugs, gambling and paying for the boom-boom, most if not all of their ill-gotten gains were gone.