Martin Billings Caribbean Crime Thrillers

by Ed Teja

  “You don’t know what he thought he saw?”

  Tim shook his head. “Marty, I was drunk enough, and he was angry enough, and that damn Venezuelan fisher-Spanish was flying fast enough that we weren’t doing anything like communicating.” He grinned. “Until I hit him, that is. He got the point of that all right. But I got no sense out of what happened. And I’d still like to know what had him wound up.”

  “What did María say?”

  “About what he was on about? Yeah, well I asked her when we got home what he was so heated up about and she said that she doesn’t listen to her brother when he tries to tell her how to live her life. Just shuts him out.”

  I tried to think through the sequence of events. “Where were you when Antonio was killed?”

  “As far as I know, seeing as I don’t know exactly when he was killed, I was at María’s house, sound asleep.”

  I smiled. “Then María can give you an alibi.”

  He shook his head. “The morning Antonio was killed she got up early, took some money from my wallet, and went to Puerto La Cruz for a shopping trip. She didn’t get back until evening.”

  “Are there any other witnesses?”

  He shook his head, rolling his eyes up in his head. “I never left the house, never saw anyone. I woke up, read a while, and watched some Spanish soap opera shit on the tube until I couldn’t stand it anymore, then fell asleep watching a video. No witnesses, your honor. I set myself up as somebody’s perfect fall guy and never even charged them for it.”

  It sounded so brutally honest that a laugh burst out of me. He gave a flicker of a real smile and just said, “Yeah.”

  “What about the drugs?” I asked.

  His face suddenly went dark, as if a cloud had passed across it.

  “What drugs?” he snapped.

  “You know what drugs,” I said. “The ones they found in your house when you were arrested.”

  “María’s house,” he corrected me. A grim smile crossed his lips. “I think the drugs were a gift—a police special. The cops here are really friendly. They know not everyone can afford his own drugs, especially in the barrio, so when they come to visit, they bring some of their own along. Being nice guys, they like to share. I hear it is very good quality stuff, but I wouldn’t know. In fact, they could afford to share good stuff, as they always confiscate it. Story goes that they made one real bust about ten years ago and that same stuff has been found on every felon arrested since then.”

  “Could the drugs belong to María?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never seen her do drugs but that doesn’t mean a lot. She knows I don’t like drugs and she does her best to please and doesn’t like getting caught doing shit she’s been asked not to. But if someone gave her a bit of coke, just as a gift of appreciation, I don’t know that she would turn it down. And she certainly wouldn’t tell anyone official if it was her drugs. The cops aren’t even particularly interested in that issue, at least they haven’t been all that curious when they talked to me.”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever. But talking isn’t something she is great at.”

  “Anyone else I can talk to who might shed some light on what happened?”

  “Try the guy who killed Antonio. That would be productive.”

  I frowned at him, noticing that he curled and uncurled his hands as we talked, at times tightening his grip, knuckle white. “You don’t have any more constructive ideas?”

  He grinned and shook his head in a garish conflict of body language. “I’m just glad you are on the case for me instead of a lawyer. If anyone refuses to help, you can pull your Special Forces shit on them. A lawyer would just serve papers.”

  “I was in the SEALS, Tim. Special Forces are part of the army.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Just in case I can’t beat up everyone in Cumaná in the name of truth, can you think of anything else I should know?”

  He shook his head. He didn’t know anything, at least nothing he was willing to share with me, but his attitude left me feeling that he was holding something back. There was something he didn’t want me to know. I didn’t like that, but for the moment there wasn’t much I could do about it. But our conversation was over. The guard stood up and said it was time to take Tim back to his cell.

  When Tim stood up, his eyes softened. “I really am glad you are here, bro,” he said. “It means a lot to me that you came.”

  “Take care. I’ll do as much as I can.”

  I stopped the guard before he left the room. As he paused in the doorway, I shoved a few U.S. dollars, that universal currency, into his hand. “My brother should have clean clothes and decent food,” I told him.

  He looked at the money and smiled. “That is possible, even certain.” He understood family.

  “If a doctor were to take a look at him today, I could show my appreciation when I visit tomorrow.”

  He looked even happier then. “We can see to that, Señor.”

  “In that case, I look forward to a good relationship developing between us.”

  “Nothing would please me more, Señor.” Then he left, Tim walking dejectedly ahead of him. I felt relieved when they were gone. If Tim had stayed much longer, he might have seen his big tough brother cry.

  It was just ten thirty when I came out of the dark jail and the bright sunlight caught me by surprise. The air had begun to heat up in preparation for the midday.

  Maggie wasn’t back yet so I bought a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from the old man who has been selling juice there ever since I first came to Venezuela, right after I got out of the Navy, what seemed like a lot of years ago. Probably he’d been right there all of his life. He had a large woven sack of oranges that sat on the sidewalk next to his cart and sitting on the cart were a tall hand press, a cutting board, and an icebox full of ice. He looked at me expectantly, and I nodded. That’s all it takes. He grabbed several oranges and began slicing them, cutting the ends off before slicing them in half. Each half went into the press in turn until the plastic cup underneath was full. “¿Hielo?” he asked. I shook my head. No ice.

  The sharp and sweet flavor of the fresh juice rushed through me as if the cells of my body had been dehydrated and now, they were sucking up liquid and nutrients.

  Tension, I reminded myself, takes a lot out of you.

  I stood in the shade to savor the juice.

  I looked over toward the vendor and his bag of oranges, debating the merits of another glass and noticed a man who seemed to be watching me. He fidgeted on a metal park bench, and I didn’t think his discomfort was just because the bench was hard. It was because of me. He seemed uncertain as to whether or not he wanted me to see him. Well, it was done now, fella, and we both knew it.

  I looked directly at him, giving him a hard look, both to fix him in my mind and to make certain he knew he was spotted. I didn’t need to waste the effort. It didn’t take a long look to take him in. He was squat and ugly, maybe in his twenties. He had a thick and stupid face, the look that results from centuries of inbreeding in a rather shallow gene pool. This was compounded by the pockmarks that indicate surviving a serious bout with acne, or maybe smallpox. If he worked in Hollywood, he would get a lot of work playing a second-rate thug in cheap movies. He’d be the one left guarding the door so there was someone around for the hero to clobber, or he might be the stupid cop who walks in on a crime and is rewarded by being thrown dead into the alley.

  At first, I figured him for an opportunist, a man on the make, curious about a gringo in Cumaná, and frantically thinking of some way to make a little money from that transitory presence. But there was something more unsettlingly personal in his attention, something stubbornly determined. Finally, he mustered his courage and nodded his head in that curious come here nod that some people master. I went over and sat down next to him.

  “Buenos días,” I said. “Did you want something from m
e?”

  “Oh good, you speak Spanish.” He spoke rapidly in a barely understandable rural dialect that almost eliminates the letter s from words and contracts almost everything else. It is heard commonly in barrios and fish camps. It wasn’t easy to follow, but I could make out what he was saying all right if I paid careful attention and let my head fill in the missing sounds without worrying about it too much.

  “So do you,” I said, just to keep him off guard.

  He chuckled. “But your brother, Señor. He is all right?”

  I pretended to be surprised that he knew who I was. I wasn’t though. I had started to feel that, in preparation for my arrival some local television station had been running a documentary on my life and focusing on my trip to Cumaná. Everyone in Cumaná seemed to have a better idea about what was going on in my life than I did.

  Maybe the one real surprise was that Victoria López had been the only one to meet me at the airport. The way things were going, there should have been a large welcoming, or unwelcoming committee. I consoled myself with the thought that perhaps having a high profile would be of more use to me than a low one. I could hope that it would at least keep people bringing me information and save me having to figure out who they were.

  “What is your interest in my brother and his health?” I asked. He shrugged and the nonchalance of it angered me. “If you know who I am, then you should know that he is about as well as a man can be when he is in jail and suspected of murder and involvement with drugs.” I snapped the words out at him and saw that he shuddered, as if he could picture himself in that situation—maybe he had been there already. Maybe more than once.

  He hung his head and sighed. “Si.”

  “If the information is of real interest to you, if you are concerned about Tim, then you could easily go see him yourself, ask the question directly. There is no need then to wait out here to talk to his other visitors.”

  He reached out, spreading stubby fingers of both hands, and turning the palms up in a classic Gallic gesture of helplessness. “I would rather not go to that place. I cannot go to that place. You see, amigo, I dislike people who wear uniforms slightly more than I care about your brother. And the men in there might take advantage of my presence. They might decide to keep me inside as well. I would not like that.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “There’s a lot of that feeling going around. Well, if you have a message for him…”

  “No, no. There is really nothing to say.”

  “But you care if he is all right?” He didn’t answer but went back to fidgeting as if he expected to find a comfortable position. “Well, tell me your name and I will tell Tim that you asked about him.”

  “Please, no!” Fear made his voice quaver. He stopped and gathered himself up in an attempt to sound calm. “I should not have come. I should not bother you. Please do not bother Tim with my silliness, Señor Billings. It is unimportant, completely unimportant. I am unimportant. I don’t know Tim that well, really.” He stood and looked around, then wiped his hand and offered it.

  I took it, and he added, “Tim would only be sad that his friends are worried.”

  I nodded and that seemed to make him happy.

  “Hasta luego,” he said and turned to walk away, moving his short legs more quickly than a casual stroll required. I took a glance around, but no one in the park seemed interested in Tim’s ugly friend, or if they were, they were very professional about not showing their interest.

  “Who was your friend?” Maggie asked a couple of minutes later as she came up to the bench carrying two arepas and her supplies from the hardware store. She handed me an arepa before sitting down beside me.

  “Someone took a bite of my arepa,” I complained.

  “Me. I couldn’t remember which was meat and which was fish, so I made a scientific test.” Her blue eyes sparkled.

  “As long as it was in the name of science.”

  “And truth and understanding.”

  “Right.”

  “So, who was the guy?”

  I laughed. “An interested party. He prefers anonymity but claims to be a friend of Tim’s. He has an allergy to the minions of justice and won’t visit Tim, but he wanted to know how he was.”

  “So, he is shy, as well as ugly.”

  “You could see that from across the street?”

  She nodded. “Good eyes.”

  “Beautiful eyes,” I corrected.

  “Beautiful good eyes?”

  “He has a fisherman’s accent. Could he be someone from Antonio’s family, a brother or cousin maybe?”

  She shook her head as I bit into my arepa. It was criolla, spicier than the normal fare in restaurants, and very good. But I was going to need another orange juice.

  “Everyone in Antonio’s family is rather nice looking,” she said. “I’ve seen Antonio and his brother Pepe a couple of times. There is absolutely no family resemblance to your park bench buddy.”

  “Not them, then. Just one more damn mysterious, interested party who factors somehow into the mess we are in.”

  “How did it go with Tim?”

  I took a deep breath to give me the strength to spit out the truth. “It was tough. He is very bitter about what has happened and life in general. He's in bad shape physically, as you know, and he’s been beaten on. I told the guard to have a doctor look at him.”

  “You think he will because you asked?”

  I nodded. “I did casually mention that if he did, he’d get a surprise in his pay envelope.”

  “Good. Something might happen then.”

  “I'm worried about him.”

  “Me too.”

  “I wonder if he is strong enough mentally to get through this.”

  “Do you believe he's innocent?”

  For a moment it hung there in the air, the killer question. “Yes,” I said finally. “I don’t think he killed anyone, and I believe him when he says he liked Antonio. His death has saddened Tim. And I even believe the drugs weren’t his.” She nodded her approval of my faith in Tim. “But he isn’t telling the truth, either.”

  She wiped juice that leaked from the arepa off her chin. “What do you mean?”

  “Tim is a lousy liar. When he can’t tell the truth, he makes bad jokes, or starts clowning around to cover for a lack of a poker face. I’m certain he knows something about the drugs the cops found. Maybe he's protecting María, or someone else. I just don’t know yet.”

  “Yet,” she mused softly. “I like the sound of that.”

  “You do?”

  “Hey, if he is going to go down for a crime he didn’t commit, and it is because he is lying, there is at least a certain nobility in covering for someone you care about.”

  We ate our arepas, then I bought two more orange juices from the old man and we sat on our bench and drank them. I wasn’t ready to do whatever needed doing next.

  After a while, Maggie asked, “Martin, are you upset that I called you? That I dragged you into this?” Her voice sounded small and uncertain. It was a tone I couldn’t remember hearing in Maggie’s voice before.

  “My Maggie uncertain?”

  “I hate this. I never know how to act when it comes to the things between you and Tim. I just couldn’t stand…”

  I put my hand on her knee and she looked up into my eyes. “You did good, chica,” I told her. “It ain’t fun, but I’m glad I’m here. Besides, I have Ugly Bill’s standards to live up to.”

  “I am relieved,” she said. “It means a lot that you believe Tim. I was panicky that you might come all this way, talk to him, and then decide that he really did it. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did.”

  “Because he lies badly, and you sensed he wasn’t coming clean.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I do believe what he told us. I just wish he’d tell me everything. But he claims he can’t even guess who else might have killed Antonio. I think he has to have some theorie
s” We sat in the pleasant shade and tried to think of our next move. I found myself alternating between following frustrating dead-end thoughts and mindlessly watching people—under better circumstances a favorite hobby of mine.

  “What about the cops?” she asked.

  “What about them?”

  “We could start by talking to them. They wouldn’t talk to me, I am just a woman, after all, and no relation to Tim. But because you are a man, as well as family, they might give you some information.”

  It was worth a try, but… “As I recall, there are about five different police forces in Venezuela, each with its own fiefdom. Which one do we go to?”

  “The technical police, the PTJ. They are the equivalent of detectives in the States, or as close to it as you’ll get.”

  I sighed. “At the least, maybe they’ll tell us why they are so certain Tim killed Antonio. The story of a bar fight doesn’t make it. No cop, especially in a port town, would think that would lead to a planned murder. And they must have other suspects. It would be nice to know who they are and why they aren’t in jail.”

  Maggie grinned and jumped up. “It’s a place to start.”

  We got the car out of hock and drove to the Cumaná headquarters of PTJ, which was in a converted house in a relatively upscale part of the city. The interior was all offices. The few benches on the front porch acted as a waiting room and were filled with people waiting to talk to the police for all the reasons, both voluntary and involuntary, that people everywhere have to talk to the police.