Cliff Roberts Thriller Box Set

by Cliff Roberts

  “I didn’t trust you to have actually done it.”

  “Great. Hey, ya know what, Bill? Do me a favor. Don’t send me on anymore fool’s errands,” I snapped.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Bill retorted.

  Once we arrived at the warehouse, Bill pulled the van inside the building and then all the way to the back by the other roll up door. “Okay, turn out the lights and open the door. I’ll get us some weights and a heavy rope,” Bill ordered, and I did as I was told. He came back from the darkened interior, carrying a small flashlight and pulling a big wagon-type cart. It was filled with what looked like bricks and a couple of coils of rope.

  “Okay, get on board the cabin cruiser, and we’ll unload this crap. Then we’ll load up the bodies using the cart because they are flat-out heavy. Once we have them on board, we’ll head out to sea, nice and slow, so the Coast Guard doesn’t think we’re running drugs. Then, once we’re out far enough, we’ll toss them overboard. Can you handle that?” Bill asked in that old psycho voice of his, and I shook my head. I was trying not to puke. The smell of the bodies after their bowels had let loose was bad. Really bad.

  That happens when you die. Nobody talks about it, but it happens. The smell reminded me of my daughter when she was a baby and the stinks she put out. It made diaper changing a toxic spill event. After she ate peas, you had to wear a wet washcloth over your face in order to breathe in the same room. No wonder she screamed so loudly when she need to be changed. She couldn’t stand it either.

  After puking, I felt better, and we quickly unloaded the cart and loaded up the first body. The plastic slipped as we shoved the body off the cart into the boat. It was Mr. Larson, the mountain of a man who did his best to intimidate me at the marina. He still looked like he could sit up and start brawling again. I didn’t see any blood on him, and there wasn’t any on the cart. Bill saw me looking at the guy and he says, “I crushed his Adam’s apple. It causes the windpipe to collapse, and he suffocated. The other one, I jammed his nose cartilage up into his brain. He’s a bit messier.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering about that.”

  While Bill drove us out to sea, I got the job of tying a bunch of the lead weights to the bodies. Bill insisted that I put at least two hundred pounds on each body, or eight of the twenty-five pound lead weights. He claimed the gases that develop as the body decomposes would lift the body up if not weighed down enough, possibly enough to cause the body to float to the surface. I followed Bill’s instructions. After all, I figured he’d done this before, since he had the lead weights and ropes just hanging around his toy shop for such an occasion. In fact, I did Bill one better and tied a total of twelve lead blocks to each body. That way, even if one or two fell off, the body still wouldn’t rise up. I used every weight we had brought, leaving none to tie to me, should he be so inclined. I left enough rope between the body and the weights to allow us to put the weights over the side, which would help pull the body over the side, making it easier on us.

  When I was done tying off the bricks and wrapping the rope around the bodies nice and tight, Bill asked me to drive for a while. He sat down hard in one of the swivel chairs just behind the helm and the driver’s seat. In the weird glow of the boat’s running lights, he looked like hell. It was obvious that he had been in the fight of his life tonight, and he needed to see a doctor. I let him sleep while I drove east.

  After an hour, I slowed and turned to look at Bill. He looked even worse than before, but he had a steady rhythm to his breathing, so I didn’t luck out. He hadn’t died from his injuries. Damn, my luck is still not worth a crap. For a moment, I thought that I could maybe do him in, in his weakened state. I could just take the fire extinguisher and hit him on the head, then toss him overboard. It’d be easy.

  I eyed the extinguisher and almost did the deed, but I stopped when I realized that I didn’t have my new ID yet or any businesses started to increase my new-found wealth. I quickly found myself debating whether or not two million was enough to live the rest of my life. I decided it wasn’t and put the idea of Bill’s murder out of my mind. I’d passed on probably what would turn out to be the only chance I’d ever get. What an idiot.

  “Why did we stop?” Bill suddenly asked. I was sure I turned beet red, and he knew I was contemplating killing him.

  “It’s been over and hour since you dozed off, and I can’t see any light in any direction, so I thought this just might be as good a spot as any,” I finally replied.

  Bill sat up straighter with great effort and looked around. “Yeah, okay. Let’s dump them and get back to shore. I need you to drive me home. When we get there, make sure Jacks or Giles calls my doctor. No emergency room stops, no clinics and no ambulance rides. Just take me to the mansion. You got that?” Bill seemed very insistent.

  “Yeah, I got that. Are you thinking you’re gonna be passed out or something?” I asked, and I must have had struck a nerve or something with my question. Bill gave me his wicked grin and said he would live long enough to make sure I never made it to shore if I had any ideas. So much for trusting me.

  After giving Mr. Larson and his friend a quick burial at sea, I sailed us straight back to Miami. With the compass pointing the way, Bill lay on his back on the bench at the back of the cockpit. As the sun came up, I took a second oxycodone and gave Bill another, then helped him to the co-pilot’s seat. He said he would direct me through the Intercoastal to the warehouse. Turned out though, we didn’t go to the warehouse but went right to the mansion. Once there, he simply said ‘park it’ and passed out. I did my best to sidle up to the dock with only a minor thud or two. Then, with the help of Jacks and Giles, we moved Bill into the mansion. Jacks called for the doctor, while I waited with Bill.

  Seems the truly rich have doctors who come to them, complete with a nurse and a big van that looks like a small motorhome. Nothing on the van said it was a mobile hospital, but it was. While the doctor worked on Bill, I took advantage of the guest room again—only this time, I closed the shades and took a good, long six hour nap.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took Bill a good three weeks to start feeling like his old self again. Turns out that Mr. Larson and his friend, before their untimely demise, had managed to break six of Bill’s ribs and puncture one of his lungs. He also had a broken wrist, four broken fingers and a broken cheekbone. Yeah, he had the fight of his life that night, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

  “Look, I don’t care if you won’t admit it, but they nearly killed you, dude. I would be willing to bet that at least one of them made a mistake in their attack on you, so you were able to land a lucky shot that gave you the chance to beat the other one. I saw those guys. They were huge. They made me look and feel little.” I took the opportunity to kick Bill while he was down, and he was getting more and more pissed at me. But hey, this was maybe the only time I’d get to harass him, and I wasn’t going to let it slide. After all, isn’t that what friends are for? Oh, yeah!

  Our little trip to visit his contacts hadn’t taken place nor had we explored the world of foreign finance. Bill had been in bed for the last three weeks. I had enjoyed my freedom and had become a regular at a local diner for breakfast. The waitresses all knew my name and greeted me when I walked in. It was almost like having friends.

  I didn’t completely ignore my friend Bill. I came by every day and hung out for a while. It was kind of like going to the zoo and watching a caged animal gnaw at the bars. His mood degraded a little bit every day until he was practically reverberating in the bed, he was so anxious to get up and start moving around. Finally, the doctor said he could start walking around the house to build his strength back up. I made sure I got the doctor’s number, since you never knew when you might need it, especially if you were a friend of Bill’s.

  After a couple of days of Bill walking around the house, he had enough. We drove the cruiser back to the warehouse and picked up Bill’s Land Rover, and we drove down to little Havana, the part of Miami where there is a larg
e portion of Cuban Americans. It was a modest neighborhood for the most part, but the people were warm and friendly. Like any neighbor, there are good people and there are bad people. Most of Little Havana consisted of prime American families doing their best to live the American dream. They worked hard and they obeyed the laws, but a couple of the younger crowd, well, they were looking for the quick buck or some fast coin and they didn’t care if it was legal or moral. They just wanted it.

  Bill knew all the right ones who were looking for a fast buck. We made a dozen stops, and at each stop Bill was given a wide berth by underlings of the wannabe crime bosses and even the real crime bosses. They all knew Bill as a man who made deals, got things done and shared the cash. They also probably knew he had killed a few people, which gave him street cred, as they say. I mostly stood, watched and listened. I nodded politely when Bill introduced me explaining that I was his uncle, that I was going to be handling some deals for him, and that they needed to view working with me as if working with him. By the end of the day, I could get a new ID, new credit cards with A-1 credit, along with a new social security card in my new name (which, if checked, would come back as real.) All of this could be had for a cool thirty thousand—if you didn’t need the Social Security, it was only fifteen thousand. Passports were cheap by comparison. Five grand and I would have a perfect passport with minor travel stamps to friendly places. I could even choose which country I wanted to be from, but of course, that came at a premium.

  The next day, Bill took me to see his attorney and then his accountant. They explained how to protect my money and how to place it in discrete overseas accounts and still have daily access to it. Bill then took me to see his buddy who was a business broker. Actually, he was a liquidator of foreclosed properties for the banks. Bill explained that the property was the real deal, not any business that I might place in it. By the time we had left there, I owned two buildings just off the parking lot of the newly-renamed Joe Robbie Stadium. It was now called the Sun Life Stadium. I had sixty days to pay for them. They had a street value according to the liquidator of $800,000 each. I paid one million for both. Bill explained to me that all I had to do was lease it out to some schmuck who wanted to open a bar there and then sell it to another schmuck who thought it was a good idea. In fact, he took over the whole project from me, saying he would show me the ropes and then I would do the next deal. Three weeks later, Bill closed the sale, and I walked away with a million dollars. With the new business leasing the buildings, the value became a million apiece, and that’s what Bill sold them for. After paying for the places, I earned a million dollars and not penny of my money ever left my pocket. I was starting to like the rich guy lifestyle.

  Two weeks after we closed the building deal, Bill came to me and asked if I wanted in on another deal. He was really quite coy about sharing exactly what I would be investing in, but he kept saying I would see a huge return. Finally, I just gave up and said, ‘Sure. I’m in.’ After all, Bill hadn’t once steered me wrong or double-crossed me. He told me to have a million in cash in three days, and he left.

  The three days came and went, and on the fourth day, Bill showed up and asked for the money. Then he sprung it on me. “Hey, look. I’m going to be out of town for about two weeks. When I come back, it’ll take a week, maybe ten days to close the deal, and then I’ll split it with you. Can you handle that?”

  “Yeah, sure. Where you headed?” I asked and instantly regretted it as he stood staring at me, grinning that wicked grin again.

  Finally, he spoke. “I’m going to Rio.”

  “Is that where the deal is?” A second stupid question.

  “No, that is where I pick up the first part of the deal, then I come back here, do a little repackaging, and then I sell off the goods and we split ten to twenty million.” He almost started to dance while explaining things, he was so excited. I knew right then it was some sort of a drug deal, and it was filled with danger. After all, it didn’t take a genius to see Bill was an adrenaline junky.

  “Do you need any help?” My third stupid question of the day.

  “No, I’m afraid if there is trouble, you would be dead weight, and I’ll need to move fast. Sorry, buddy. Besides, you don’t really want to know what’s going to go down. That way, if there is problem, you’re in the clear,” he stated flatly.

  “It’s a drug deal, obviously,” I stated, acting all cool with it, while I was screaming at myself inside my head that I didn’t want anything to do with it.

  “Oh, but it is so much more. What do you know about diamonds?” Bill asked.

  “They’re rocks that you have to dig out of the ground. Some big time corporate cartel controls most of them. That way the prices stay really high, and they get the lion’s share of the profit. I’ve bought a few in my life, but not many.” I was a fountain of information on the subject of diamonds.

  “Fair enough, although that’s a crude overview—pretty much what most people know. However, that huge corporate cartel is owned and controlled by the richest sons of bitches on the planet. They like to tell miners just to whom and where and for how much they can sell their diamonds. They do all sorts of dirty tricks to keep the lid on the diamond trade. The cartel is the one that coined the phrase ‘blood diamonds’ in an effort to diminish the demand for the cheaper stones out of the war-torn areas that they couldn’t get control of.

  “Think about it. If everyone started to buy diamonds from non-cartel outlets, why, they would be broke in a heartbeat. They hold trillions of dollars’ worth of diamonds in big vaults all over the world. They’ve been accused of fomenting labor disputes at the independent mines, filing environmental lawsuits against them, buying out their suppliers and then closing them down. The cartel has even been accused of having people killed who wouldn’t accept their rules and their prices.

  “Down in Brazil, I have a few contacts from my school years who have access to raw, uncut diamonds—a lot of raw, uncut diamonds. The Brazilian government has made a deal with the cartel to stop anyone from trading these uncut stones unless it is to the cartel. Now, down in Brazil, the mines are way out in the jungles, out toward the Andes and a few other places where old mountains once stood, you know, old volcanic hot spots. Diamonds are found in Kimberlite Pipes. That’s what the geologists call them. They form in and around volcanic hot spots. So my old school chum, he has access to these diamonds by paying twice what the cartel will pay, but that’s where he runs into trouble.

  “He can’t ship them out legally, so he has to smuggle them out. The Brazilian government is watching very closely for any diamonds, but they look the other way when a little cocaine goes by. Their customs officials will take a few bucks and become blind for a while, provided they can check the package to make sure it’s cocaine. I’ve made this trip about a dozen times now. I’m just a cocaine courier. I pay the bribes and move right through, taking a trip to St. Martin in the Caribbean. I’ll drive my boat down there and park it, while I fly to Brazil and then fly back out.

  “The boat trip takes the most time, but Jacks and Giles go with me and stay with the boat and help drive it down and back. Once we get back here, we sift the diamonds out of the powder and then we sell off the coke and the diamonds. We pay two million dollars for the drugs and diamonds, then resell them here for about eight million. I’ve got contacts in the jewelry business who handle the distribution all across the country, and I sell the coke for bargain prices in Little Havana. After expenses, you should see about seven to eight million, maybe a little more. Nice return, huh?” Bill asked as that wicked grin crossed his face again.

  “You’re right. I’ll stay here and count the money when you get back. I don’t really want to be involved, but you already have the money,” I mumbled, trying act like I had no choice in the matter.

  “Oh, hey, if that’s going against your principles, then take it back. I’ll get some cash at the ATM,” Bill’s snickered.

  “No, keep the money. I need to build my nest egg. I want
to get a place of my own, and I want to have plenty left over,” I stated like a true gangster.

  “Now you’re coming around, Jake, my man. Soon you’ll be a regular card carrying member of the elite rich asshole party, and you’ll be raking in the cash from the stupid shits who inherit their cash and don’t have a clue how to keep it. You’ll be a man among boys. They’ll name streets and schools after you for your philanthropy.” Bill was happy that I had taken the deal. He hadn’t a clue that I was planning on running as fast and as far as I could, just as soon as I had ten million. I don’t know why I picked that number, but I felt like it was the true game changing figure. The one that meant you never had to think about money again. You just had to have it and plenty of it.

  While Bill and his man servants took their little trip, I practiced shooting the nine millimeter handguns Bill had stashed at the penthouse. After I had fired a few thousand rounds, I got pretty good. I even bought my own gun again at another traveling gun show. It was a Sig Sauer .40 caliber with a nine shot clip. I then practiced with that until I could hit a fairly tight grouping, pretty much on center. I had spent ten grand on a weapon, ammo, practice and silencer, but I was now ready to shoot my way out if I had to. With this deal, I’d be more than halfway to my goal.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  After Bill got back, he stopped by the condo and showed me exactly how the diamonds had been packed inside the cocaine. I thought it was strange how it was a major problem to smuggle some rocks out of a country, but a dangerous drug, which had probably killed millions around the world, wasn’t any big deal. Mankind was sure a twisted mess.

  Anyway, the cocaine looked just like the packages you see on TV. It was shaped like a standard hardcover book—about eight and half by eleven inches in size—and wrapped in plastic wrap (the kind that really clings to things) and then duct tape over that. They call it a brick because you can stack it like bricks and it will stand up. Every now and then, the DEA will come across a cargo carrier with pallets of cocaine. They’ll all be stacked nice and neat, wrapped securely in plastic. Just like the pallets of food that come in on trucks at the grocery store. As he tore open the brick, he got a colander out of the cabinet and proceeded to sift the diamonds out of the cocaine. I stood staring at the process, fascinated by the diamonds.