Rum Runner eBook_for Epub_Revised

by dannal

  “The property I’m looking at is growing tobacco at the moment,” de Losa said. “I wonder how difficult it would be to cultivate sugarcane in its place.”

  “How many acres?” Max asked.

  “A hundred and twenty,” de Losa said, pulling an aluminum tube out of his coat pocket. He unscrewed the cap from the bottom of the tube and gave it a light shake, releasing the fine Cuban cigar trapped within. He snipped the end with a razor cutter and blazed it to life with a torch.

  “Sorry, would you like one?” Marquise de Losa asked.

  Max shook his head. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to convert it over,” Max said, “if you have enough manpower.” Truth was, Max knew very little about horticulture. And it didn’t matter what he told the violent criminal; he’d be dead in a few days anyway. “Sure, sounds completely doable.”

  Coyo ascended the grand spiral staircase from the lower deck. He carried a silver tray laden with a decanter bottle of the very fine rhum agricole from Habitation Saint-Etienne, three glasses, a bucket of ice, and a small rectangular tray filled with assorted snacks: nuts, dried fruits, various cheeses. He placed the tray down on the stone-topped table and set an old-fashioned glass in front of each man at the table.

  “Ice, gentlemen?” Coyo asked, flashing a charismatic grin.

  Tito nodded, Max and de Losa both shook their heads. Coyo dropped two square ice cubes in Tito’s glass and poured the rum.

  “If that’s all, gentlemen,” Coyo said, bowing slightly. Then he made his way back down the staircase to the nether parts of the mammoth vessel.

  “What time do you have?” de Losa asked.

  Max looked at the face of his Bulova timepiece. “Eleven seventeen.”

  “Oh, I’ve got to make a call.” Marquise stood up from the table and strode toward the windowed walls on the starboard side of the mega yacht’s sunny cigar lounge. The skunk-haired thug pulled the cell phone from his pocket and began to tap on the screen, as he peered out toward the open Atlantic Ocean.

  Max looked impatiently at Marquise de Losa’s unattended glass of HSE rum. He nosed his own glass and noted the candied fruit and vanilla notes in the V.S.O.P’s aroma. He took a sip, and instantly loved the vegetal, alcoholic taste imbued with a peppery spiciness and a strong overtone of French oak. If he could divert Tito’s attention away, just for a moment, Max would seize the opportunity. He would lace Marquise de Losa’s drink with the deadly toxin and be done with it.

  “Tito,” Max said suddenly. “Any chance you could run down to the storage hold, the one near the engine room where we unloaded all of that Fleur de Lis rum, and grab a bottle that’s marked with two Xs? I’d like to give Marquise a side-by-side comparison with the HSE.” Max really just wanted Tito out of the room so he could lace de Losa’s drink with the lethal ricin.

  Tito’s coat pocket screamed to life with the tinny, electronic sound of a woman’s twangy voice singing, I’d bet my boots, I belong to you. I’d bet my boots, you were meant for me.

  Marquise de Losa glared at Tito. Unadulterated rage blazed in his eyes. The cold-blooded Cuban took two steps toward the strapping, peroxide-blond-haired man and stopped.

  Tito tried to respond. He stood up and said, “Wait, Marquise, I don’t even know how this—”

  Tito never finished his sentence.

  De Losa whipped his machete out of its scabbard under his coat. The vicious killer drew the long blade back with blurring speed, ready to strike down with fury.

  Tito put up both hands in front of himself in protest, but it was of no use.

  The first blow from Marquise de Losa’s machete killed Tito. The black-and-white-haired killer brought the long razor-like blade down hard at the intersection of the man’s sinewy, tattooed neck and his shoulder.

  De Losa needed two hands to retrieve the blade, as deeply as it had sunk into Tito’s muscular frame.

  And then Marquise de Losa went bananas. He drew the blade back, striking it down on Tito’s body again and again. The machete continued to strike long after the unfortunate man’s limp corpse had fallen back, sprawled over the back of the off-white fabric of the cigar lounge’s sofa.

  Bright crimson splatters of blood rained everywhere. Max felt Tito’s warm lifeblood sprinkling his face and peppering his clothes as Marquise de Losa struck the dead man with his primitive weapon over and over again.

  By the time Marquise de Losa was finished, standing and spitting on Tito’s lifeless and mutilated corpse, the entire sitting area of the cigar lounge had suddenly transformed from a soft eggshell color to a shockingly bright stain of red.

  Everest Walsh descended the spiral staircase and stepped out into the cigar lounge. “What’s this?”

  Marquise de Losa didn’t say a word.

  “Marquise! Just what in the hell is this?” Walsh shouted, holding his hands out to his sides, palms up, as if in disbelief. “You stupid bastard. What did you do to my boat?”

  “I…,” Marquise de Losa said, trying to find the words to explain a situation that defied explanation. “He just…”

  “I don’t care what you do with your men, Marquise,” Walsh said. “I really don’t. The cigar magnate’s face turned redder by the second, giving Max the mental suggestion of a tomato in a microwave oven; he wondered how much heat it would take until the man’s head finally burst. “But you just can’t go and do a thing like this in the middle of my lounge. Look at this mess. There’s blood on every surface. And look at Max, for crap’s sake. He’s soaked to the gills.”

  Marquise de Losa looked at Max, an embarrassed expression on his face. He appeared more as a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar than as a cold-blooded murderer who had just brutally dispatched one of his own friends.

  “You’re gonna clean this up,” Everest Walsh said, and he began to pace back and forth on the line of demarcation on the floor where the splattered blood met the lush unspoiled portion of clean white carpet.

  “Max,” Walsh said, turning his attention away from de Losa, “you’ve got a boat. Would you help us out here? Let’s say you haul all of this furniture and carpet over to your island and throw it on a burn pile, make it like it never happened. And let’s say I make your rum total nine hundred large instead of eight hundred. What do you say? Help a brother out?”

  Max looked at Marquise de Losa, who appeared eager for an answer as well. His face still dripped Tito’s blood.

  “Why the hell not,” Max said.

  “How you lose him?” Momo asked Zann, a quizzical look on his face.

  “How’d I lose him?” Zann said by way of defending himself. “You were there too. I was waitin’, ready to put the bag over his head the whole time. Didn’t help that Tiny Deege called, askin’ me if I would pick him up some nachos and some kinda spray or balm for his jacked-up foot.”

  “Whyn’t you put your gear on vibrate, chump?” Momo asked, wondering how much more incompetence he could stand. “An’ you know how much the roaming charges are down here. Cell phone bill gonna be outta sight, brother. An’ you be careful with that hood, fool.” He looked down at the black backpack containing all of their gear. It sat on the floor next to Zann’s chair. “Get it too close to your face and you gonna get knocked out by them fumes.”

  Zann looked sheepish. He shrugged his shoulders and scratched his orange afro.

  The two men occupied an outside table at a café overlooking a picturesque turquoise bay near Le Francois. The place had the typical vibrant décor Momo seemed to see everywhere he went, along with the same pleasant laid-back vibe. Water lapped gently at the stones bordering the restaurant’s deck area, just a few feet below their table.

  Sailboats with barren masts rested at anchor here and there, populating the pure blue-green water of the bay. Zann sipped café au lait from an oversized mug, while Momo drank a bottle of Biere Lorraine.

  Momo and Zann had followed Josue Remy under cover of darkness from the ilet where he lived, near Le Robert, to a small hotel in Le Francois whose fad
ed white and black sign read Caline Hotel Ours. At first, Momo had assumed the punk weasel, Josue, was meeting a woman. But it soon appeared more likely that Josue was stalking or surveilling the woman, who happened to be a tasty, dark-skinned local in a bright red floral dress.

  Some guy, a real badass, like a military rebel or something, came knocking on the woman’s door shortly after Josue had arrived, the latter crouching low and hiding between two cars in the hotel parking lot. Momo and Zann hid in an alley across the street, watching, until the woman and the military guy left the hotel an hour or so later—probably to go get breakfast or something. Josue broke into the sweet honey’s hotel room by jimmying the door to the room. Made short work of it too.

  “Didn’t know Josue was gonna sneak out the back,” Zann said apologetically.

  Momo and Zann had stood waiting for Josue to come out the same door he had forcibly entered for nearly another hour before they thought to go take a look around the backside of the tiny hotel. There they found the back window of the girl’s room wide open, curtains flapping in the tropical morning breeze.

  “You know he gonna slip out the back way?” Zann asked Momo before taking a sip of his milky mug of sweet coffee.

  “Nah, man,” Momo conceded.

  “So what we gon’ do now?” Zann asked Momo. “Who you gotta know to get a scone ’round this place.” The nervous gang member waved through a wide window opening with no glass on the front wall of the café, flagging down a young waitress who stood behind a long glass pastry case filled with baked delights. “Yo, yeah, you. You gotta scone or donut or somethin’?”

  “We goin’ to go back to the cat, and we gonna sit an’ wait for our next chance to grab that slippery black back-stabbin’ creep,” Momo said, as he gazed out over the tranquil bay. “We gonna grab him, and we gonna mess up his whole day.”

  The waitress brought a big plate of freshly fried beignets, liberally coated in a ridiculous amount of powdered sugar. Zann snatched one off the tray and took a big bite. “Oww!” he shouted, instinctively spitting the searing bite of pastry onto the rocks beside the bay. “Damn thing’s hot. Burned my tongue.”

  After Momo paid the waitress for breakfast—a small argument ensued about the U.S. currency Momo had tried to pay with, before he ultimately whipped out his Visa card to square up the check—the two gang members asked where they might buy some gasoline, and then headed back to the spot on a nearby beach where they had secured their personal watercraft.

  “Yo, Zann,” Momo said, unable to hide the stress in his voice. “Where we leave the Sea-Doo?”

  “We left it right here, under this tree with the little green grape-lookin’ things,” Zann said, his own voice betraying a sensation of panic.

  The sand underneath the tree was smooth and flat, in contrast to the rough and uneven sand covering most of the rest of the beach; it suggested that their watercraft had been slid away from its parking spot in the cool shade of the tropical tree.

  “I’m gonna…” Momo gritted his teeth and reached for his waistband. He didn’t know who he was going to shoot, but he wanted to be ready to shoot someone.

  “Hello,” a skinny old man wearing a red Speedo said from where he was sitting nearby on a spread-out beach towel. It took the white-haired man awhile to get up, but he trotted over to where Momo and Zann stood underneath the seagrape tree. “Hello, young friends.”

  “What you know, fool?” Momo said in a threatening way. “You’d best not know anythin’ about this situation or you gonna have a bad day too. An’ put on some shorts or somethin’.”

  “Hello,” the old man reiterated. He struck Momo as a bleached prune that had been somehow stretched into the shape of a stringbean. “May I help you find something? You look like you and friend are lost.”

  The man spoke English, but it sounded broken, as if he was French or something. “What I know is I parked our ride over here, under this weird grape tree,” Momo said in an escalatingly irritated tone. “Now me an’ my compatriot come back to the spot an’ our ride ain’t here. You seen who took off with it?”

  “No,” the old man said. “I see nothing. But I have seen another seagrape tree down the beach. There is a motorcycle boat under it. It says something…Sea-Doo…on the side. Does this help you?”

  Momo didn’t say a word. He pulled out his wallet and slipped out a hundred dollar bill, handing it to the skinny sunbather, and then proceeded a hundred yards or so down the beach to where he and Zann had parked the Sea-Doo.

  Once back on the water, Momo felt Zann’s hands wrap around his waist until the platinum-grilled gang member’s fingers interlocked in front of Momo’s stomach.

  “What you doin’, fool? This ain’t the Titanic.”

  “I don’t wanna fall off, Momo,” Zann said, in a slightly distressed voice. “You know I don’t know how ta swim.”

  “Why you think you wearin’ that lifejacket, Zann?”

  “Still don’t feel safe back here is all.” Zann released his grip on Momo and felt around for another spot to hold on.

  Momo piloted the Sea-Doo to a small marina in Le Robert the waitress at the café had given them directions to. At a narrow inlet, he spotted a slightly rusted sign on a piling with an image of a bright red gas pump and an arrow. Momo’s eyes followed the arrow to a dock with two gas pumps; he piloted the Sea-Doo to the first pump.

  “Bonjour,” the attendant said. “Comment allez-vous?”

  “Can I buy gas?” Momo asked. “I wanna buy gas for my Sea-Doo.”

  “Ah, American,” the man said. “Welcome. Yes, I’ll get you topped off. Credit card?”

  Momo handed the attendant his Visa card and unscrewed the gas cap on the watercraft. He stretched his arms out over his head and looked around. A long black inflatable police boat pulled up to the other pump directly in front of them.

  Momo looked away at once, feeling a sudden sense of panic. But then he tried to be rational. What had he done that was illegal in Martinique? He had passed through Customs without issue. Other than the .50 caliber pistol tucked into his waistband, he and Zann were legit. He looked down at his waist. He adjusted the baggy Miami Dolphins jersey he had put on earlier so that it covered the bulge of the pistol’s substantial grip.

  “Hello,” a strong voice spoke from the dock. Momo gazed up, seeing a very official-looking man in a powder blue uniform with black and white striped patches on his shoulders. The man stepped down the steps toward Momo and Zann, kneeling next to them on the concrete dock.

  The guy looked like a fancy-dressed policeman, or a military man. Momo didn’t know which. The guy had short graying hair and piercing eyes that somehow increased Momo’s sensation of guilt the longer he looked at the man.

  “On vacation?” the official-looking guy asked.

  “Yeah, man,” Momo said. “Me and my man here is just takin’ a bit of rest and relaxation.”

  “Oh, American,” the man said, taking a cigar out of his shirt pocket. “Are you two married?”

  Zann laughed out loud. Momo just cringed and said, “Get outta here, man. We ain’t a couple. We’s just friends. Straight friends.” And then Momo added, “Sir.”

  “I’m sorry,” the military guy said. “You just never know these days. I’m Colonel Travere. I head up the Gendarmerie Nationale here. We’re one of the two police forces on the island. Actually we are part of the French military, but our duties here are law enforcement.”

  “Nice to meet you, Colonel,” Momo said. “I’m Momo, this is Zann.”

  “You guys from Miami?” Colonel Travere asked.

  “Yeah,” Zann said, sounding surprised. “How you know that?”

  “I thought so. You just strike me as Miami guys.” The Colonel took his funny French-looking hat that was tucked under his arm and placed it on his head. “Good day to you. Enjoy the rest of your vacation here.” And then he stepped back onto the police boat, where he sat down and began to light up his cigar.

  “He thought we was married,�
� Zann said. “That ain’t right.”

  “I wouldn’t marry you if you was the last eligible bachelorette in the world, Zann,” Momo said. “Although sometimes you be naggin’ me like you was my wife.”

  Momo got his receipt for the gas and powered the Sea-Doo out of the marina, being careful to obey the posted speed limit. He waved to the two policemen on the way, then he opened the throttle and motored back toward the catamaran at its anchorage not far from that huge black and white yacht.

  Momo made sure their route would make a wide sweeping arc past the long white pier on the overgrown ilet where Josue lived. Momo would make a quick drive-by, trying not to appear too suspicious.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Momo shouted to Zann. “Be on the lookout. We gonna swing by the spot where we seen Josue leavin’ this morning. Look and see if you can spot him.”

  “Okay, Momo,” Zann shouted back. “But I can’t see much past you, ’cause you so big.”

  As the Sea-Doo drew up in sight of the pier, Momo spotted a white and blue fishing boat at the dock, the same one they had seen hours earlier, when Josue had left the dock on a small black inflatable raft. But this time, Momo spotted Josue loading boxes into the bow of the docked fishing boat.

  It was really him; the wretched traitor was right there in front of Momo, in full living color. Momo’s mind raced to form the best plan possible. He knew that when he approached, Josue would recognize him and Zann within seconds. They would have to make their move quickly.

  “There he is,” Zann shouted from behind Momo’s shoulder. “It’s Josue!”

  “Shhhhhhh!” Momo shushed back. “We gonna try to come up from behind him as best we can. I’m gonna ask if he have a first aid kit, ‘cause my friend—you—cut himself pretty bad on some coral while skin diving. Dig?”

  Zann nodded vigorously.

  Momo motored the Sea-Doo toward the dock and cut the engine, hoping that by silencing the watercraft he might gain a couple more seconds of anonymity. Josue turned around to look at the Sea-Doo that was bearing down toward him.