Martin Billings Caribbean Crime Thrillers

by Ed Teja

  The adrenaline was still surging through me. Until we sat down in the bar for a drink, I hadn’t realized how keyed up I’d gotten. It had been a long, long time since my last firefight, and I had forgotten the rush that came afterwards.

  “Can’t you tell me who you really are?” I asked noting that she was pale. “It’s maddening to be the only one stumbling in the dark.”

  She sipped a scotch on the rocks. “I can’t tell you everything yet,” she said, “and you aren’t the only one in the dark, but I can tell you that everything I’ve said is basically true. I am a lawyer, I was born in Chile, and,” she paused, her eyes looking away, “the people I work for are not out to get Tim. We are interested in finding out the truth. We are good guys.”

  “Good guys who lie? Wilfredo, my favorite cop, says there is no lawyer named Victoria López from Venezuela.”

  “I didn’t say I was a Venezuelan lawyer,” she snapped. “I said I was a lawyer in Venezuela.”

  It was too much for me, and I told her so. “I have trouble with complicated people,” I said. “It’s all I can do to keep my life simple. Tim, and other people, keep complicating it in ways I can’t control. But if I had my way, things would always be as simple as possible.” I smiled. “And no simpler.”

  “That sounds charming,” she said. “Impractical, however.”

  We drank in silence for a bit, and then I ordered another round. Even before it came, I could feel that I was starting to let down, that I’d be able to really taste the next drink. That was usually the next phase for me—taste, smell, touch, and vision all became more acute. And now my sense of smell and vision were telling me what an attractive woman I was sitting with.

  I didn’t think that, exactly. The realization came over me in a rush, like surf over a coral reef. I watched her sip her drink, her long elegant fingers wrapped around her glass instead of the grip of a pistol. For the first time I noted that the black tee shirt she wore accented her small breasts. She clearly wasn’t wearing a bra. I told myself, uselessly, not to get worked up over this woman, whose golden eyes were clouded with thought.

  “Martin,” she said. “Have you ever killed someone?” Then she blushed. “I’m sorry. What a stupid question. I know you have, many times. You were in the war.”

  I nodded, hoping she wouldn't ask which war. Or maybe she knew that too, but most of the wars I was in were not for public consumption. We weren't supposed to mention they ever happened. Her look grew uncertain.

  “Please tell me...have you gotten used to it?” She asked, her mouth trembling.

  Suddenly, the truth dawned on me. The professional, precise, Victoria López had never killed anyone before.

  “Your first time?” I asked putting a hand on her bare arm. She was shaking all over now, a subtle seismic shock that was felt but wouldn’t be seen. Her eyes pointed into mine, but their light was gone again. I waited for a time and took her hand in mine.

  The waitress brought our drinks and gave me a funny look. I guess she saw Victoria’s red and now teary eyes and thought I was telling my wife I had a girlfriend, or the other way around.

  After she was gone, I answered softly, “No, Victoria, if you care about people at all, you never get used to killing. You can get used to the fighting, and people trying to kill you. After a while the killing can get easier, but afterwards, the picture of them dead, knowing that you did it, always tears at you. It’s better in the jungle when you never see their faces, never know for sure that it was your bullet that hit them.” I knew I was mouthing useless nonsense, but there aren’t any good words, none that will make it all feel right. So, you do the best you can.

  “Good,” she said. “Now you’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes.”

  She stood and headed for the ladies' room. I wondered if this was a strategy to make an escape, to get away from me and the reminder of what she had done. But in a few minutes, she was back, her makeup repaired and looking more composed. I could tell she was into whatever the second phase of the reaction was for her. I’ve known some people who didn’t react, especially to the first kill, and they aren’t people I want to be around.

  We seemed to have run out of conversation, and I kept thinking she’d leave any moment. After a while she surprised me, asking if we could have dinner together, and it made me aware of how hungry I was.

  “Where do you want to go for dinner?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nowhere. There’s a restaurant in the hotel.”

  “The food’s lousy.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she smiled. “I’m not truly hungry. But we do have to eat sooner or later, and I don’t want to be alone right now.”

  We ate a mediocre dinner in the hotel restaurant, and I learned a bit about her, that she had been divorced for a few years after a short marriage to an investment banker.

  “But no scars,” she said. “We just never fit together. Not an original or interesting story, I’m afraid.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” I asked her. “That you never fit together.”

  She looked sad for a moment. “We liked many of the same things, but in such different ways.” Her eyes were far away. “He was, still is, I guess, a conservative, cautious person. We both liked the outdoors, but he wanted to picnic, and I wanted to climb Kilimanjaro. He wanted to day sail in a lake and I wanted to go around the world. He wanted to savor life, like fine wine, while I thought it was a wild ride that you had to jump into, with both feet, and no looking back.”

  I laughed. “That must have made it hard to have fun together.”

  She sighed. “Exactly. And I refuse any life without fun.”

  “Good camp motto,” I agreed.

  “Poor Simon never understood any of it at all, either why we were at odds, or why I wouldn’t stay and work things out. And of course, I couldn’t explain it so that he would understand. Why would I choose risk over comfort? My choices would never make sense to him.”

  After dinner, we ordered a bottle of wine and took it up to my room. I can’t remember whose idea that was, but both of us were caught up in a current of emotion that would have been hard to resist if we’d wanted to.

  Also unclear is the precise sequence of events that brought us to the bed, half undressed, her hand inside my pants, stroking me, my hands gently caressing her erect nipples. But then, abruptly, she said, “Martin, don’t make love to me tonight.”

  The shock of her words jarred me out of my complacent slide into sensual overload.

  “No?” I asked hearing my feeble voice, certain that the intensity of the present, intimate situation was as much her doing as mine. I clutched her breast. “Don’t make love to you?”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it if you made love to me.”

  I was trying to understand that idea, especially under the circumstances, when she took my hand from her breast and slid it inside the waistband of her pants, and down between her legs.

  “Keep things simple. Don’t make love to me. Just fuck me until neither of us can see straight.”

  It was a goal I was willing to shoot for.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I woke the next morning to find everything wrong. The light came from the wrong direction, the air was close and filled with strange smells. My head cleared slowly, and I grew aware of the hotel room, the warm, naked body hogging most of the bed and snuggled up against my side. I looked over at Victoria and watched her slow, deep breaths. She was not a morning person, I thought.

  I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Coming back, I went to the window to stare out onto the street. It was deserted, or nearly so. A couple of young guys dressed like U.S. gang members hung around a corner, leaning against the dirty wall and smoking cigarettes. I wondered if they were waiting for something in particular, or just for their lives to start. It could be like that when you were a teen. Just then, a pickup came up with several men and boys in the back. The man in the passenger
seat of the truck called the boys over. They talked to the man for a few minutes then shrugged and climbed in the back of the truck. Pick-up labor, I decided. The corner was one of those designated pick-up spots for itinerant work not found on any map.

  Victoria still enjoyed a deep and sonorous sleep. I thought about waking her but decided not to. I don’t like waking people who are sleeping well. Good sleep can be hard to come by, and it seems criminal to disturb it. I also felt a bit of anxiety about talking to her in the light of day. We had talked a lot last night, but not that much of our conversation had been about us. Not at the core. Misunderstandings make me edgy, and we hadn’t even managed an understanding to mess up. Maybe I’m just oversensitive about relationships.

  Maggie seemed to think I read far too much into relationships. I was glad Maggie had made our situation clear, her view of it, that is, the way she had. If she hadn’t, I imagined that last night would have gone more or less the way it did anyway, but this morning I’d be feeling guilty as hell and wondering what I’d say to Maggie. She had spared me that.

  Watching Victoria, thinking about last night, made me begin to get excited all over again, so I decided to get a shower. When I went in the bathroom, I saw a pretty disreputable mug looking out of the mirror. It’s terrible the quality of the mirrors they put in hotels. It had to be that.

  Why would a foxy young woman like Victoria spend the night with a guy who looked like the bum in that mirror? I showered and shaved, letting a more normal appearance evolve. I became marginally better looking, anyway.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Victoria sat up in the bed, stretching like a cat. She gave me a big smile. It delighted me that she didn’t pull the sheet up over her breasts when I walked in or go in for any of that false modesty. After I’ve slept with a woman, I find that affected coyness offensive.

  “Next in the bathroom,” she said cheerfully, hopping up. “You know, when I first woke up, I thought you’d left, and I was angry. Then I heard the shower and knew you were just making yourself beautiful for me.” She trotted past me toward the bathroom, giving me a pat on the ass as she went by. “Cute butt,” she said.

  I smiled. So, that was my secret attraction.

  “By the way,” she said. “I ordered breakfast from room service. I hope you don’t mind. The food will probably be awful, but I haven’t had breakfast in bed in years.

  I didn’t mind. It had been a long time for me too. After all, what is the fun of breakfast in bed without a friend to lick the crumbs off?

  While she showered, I made a few phone calls. First, I tried to get in touch with Maggie. A friend of hers in Puerto La Cruz took messages for her when she was chartering, but he hadn't heard from her.

  “She said she’d call when the guests were on board—one of them has a cellular phone. But she hasn’t yet. She usually calls and gives me the number.”

  “When she does, ask her to call me.”

  “I can do that.”

  That would have to do. I thought about leaving her some kind of warning, but what could I say in a short message that would be useful? She already knew that María had been killed and Tim beaten, knowing that some thug got killed and another injured trying to snatch Ramón added nothing to the equation.

  I made my second call to Wilfredo. He wasn’t in yet, so I called the hospital and talked to the doctor in charge of Tim’s case. Tim was stable, but still in a coma. They were going to operate in about an hour in an attempt to relieve pressure on his brain. This should bring him out of the coma, and then they would do what they could for his eye. They wouldn’t have any new information until he had stabilized again after surgery. It wasn’t great news, but it was good to hear that he was hanging in there.

  Once I’d made all the calls I could think of, I felt that I’d hit a wall. There was nothing I could do until I met with Ramón at lunchtime. I couldn’t think of anyone to see, or anyplace I could go where I might learn anything.

  I took out my notepad and wrote down the names of all the involved parties I could think of, starting with Ramón, then began to list what I knew about them and what I suspected, underneath. Ramón had told me that Tim had not killed Antonio, that he was being used. Who?

  That was the big question. It could be Ramón talking about himself, because I already knew he was using Tim, but I didn’t think that that was what he meant. It was too subtle an approach for Ramón to take. That left Pancho and the gringo.

  And Victoria, of course, but I no longer had even a remote thought of her as a possibility. Her gut-wrenching reaction to what she said was her first kill seemed pretty authentic. And if she’d been the one behind it all, she would have been smarter to let them kill me. Victoria was plenty smart, so I thought that let her out.

  I’d hit a logical dead end. Both Pancho and the gringo, whoever he was, were after the drugs. Neither of them seemed to care what Antonio had seen, nor who killed him, which of course could mean that they already knew the answer to that puzzle. Ramón had taken the drugs from Pancho and said he knew who killed Antonio, and there the circle closed on itself. I was missing a piece of the puzzle somehow. I was putting together the picture with the pieces on the table, but an important piece was on the floor, somewhere out of sight. But where to look? All I had was Ramón, and he would help only if Maggie could smuggle him out of the country to safety.

  The odd thing was that it almost didn’t matter who had beaten up Tim or tried to have me killed. Those events were not the main story. My investigation interested someone, but only because they thought I could lead them to Ramón. And they had been right. I had done it once already, maybe twice. The irony was that they didn’t want Ramón at all, only his knowledge of where the drugs were. But he had said he didn’t have the drugs any longer. Had someone set him up, too? That meant that the playing field grew crowded with faceless players.

  Victoria came out of the bathroom looking fresh and wonderful and smelling of soap. She slid under the sheet next to me and put her arms around my waist from the back. I felt her lips on my back. I was about to tell her to stop, that I was trying to concentrate when room service showed up. I gave up. I wasn’t getting anywhere with my thoughts anyway.

  The breakfast turned out to be better than we had expected. It was only toast, eggs, coffee, and orange juice, but it tasted pretty good and I felt better afterward.

  “That was good.”

  Victoria slid her hand up my leg. “I’m still hungry.”

  I looked into her ravenous eyes and smiled. There were a number of ways to spend the time until the meeting with Ramón, and under the circumstances I couldn’t think of another quite so pleasant nor distracting.

  We finally got dressed about eleven. I called the desk to see if there had been any messages or phone calls that hadn’t been put through for some reason. I was surprised that I hadn’t heard from Maggie yet. But they insisted that there had been no calls at all. I called Maggie’s friend and he hadn’t heard from her yet either. Then I called Chris to see if he had any idea where she was.

  “On charter,” he said.

  “I know that,” I said impatiently. “But where? I need to get in touch with her. It is important.”

  “Somewhere in Tigrillo, I suspect,” he said. “I think she was picking the charter up in Puerto La Cruz early and then heading back to Tigrillo. At least that’s what I remember her telling me.”

  “She said she’d stay in touch, that someone on the boat would have a cellular phone.”

  “Yeah, well the cellular service is pretty inconsistent out there. There are a lot of dead spots with no service at all. Her being out of touch for a day or two isn’t all that unusual.”

  “It is when she wants to know how Tim is doing,” I said. Chris was unimpressed and unconcerned, so I rang off, more upset than I should have been. “He’s a great help,” I said.

  “Who is?” Victoria asked.

  “Chris. The guy that Tim used to work for, or stil
l works for, I don’t know his status, I guess.”

  “Didn’t you say that he was in Cumaná the day María was killed? And acting suspicious?”

  “Well, nervous. But we know that Highball killed María.”

  “Highball?”

  “The gringo with the silver sunglasses I told you about.”

  “He killed María?”

  “He even bragged about it. Maggie figured that Chris must have a girlfriend here. Close enough for convenience and far enough away so that she doesn’t run into the wife at the market.”

  “That’s possible,” she said, not sounding convinced. She shrugged. “There is so much we don’t know.” She put her foot up on the bed, tugged up her pant leg and began strapping on an ankle holster.

  “Pretty snazzy.”

  “And very fashionable in Venezuela.”

  “You think you’ll need that?”

  She put her foot down and shook her leg so that the pant leg slid down over the holster, concealing it. “I didn’t think I’d need a gun when I went out last night, but I did. Who can tell? I’ll feel better having one along. The .38 I used last night is too bulky for me to carry around town in broad daylight, but this is just the ticket. It isn’t a man stopper, but it will do a lot more than annoy anyone who catches a slug from it. And it’s legal. Registered and everything.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “In what name?”

  She laughed, and then came over to kiss me.

  I had a sudden thought. “Why were you following me last night?”

  “To stay well informed. You always seem impressed by that trick. I wanted to keep on impressing you.” She smiled at my scowl. “Oh, come on! I have to have some secrets.”

  “With me?”

  “With everyone.” She took in my disapproval. “Oh, all right. When I heard you were staying here, I paid a desk clerk to make copies of all your messages.” She looked thoughtful. “I’d guess that someone else did the same thing. I figured out that your message was from Ramón and I wanted to meet him, too. So, I followed you. I think we were lucky that I brought firepower.”