by Jay Giles
Pleasure Cruise Shot To Hell
A Mystery
Jay Giles
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locale, person or event is entirely coincidental.
Pleasure Cruise Shot To Hell
(The Bullet-Riddled Yacht Book 1)
Copyright © 2015 Jay Giles
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. Printed in the United States of America.
Cover Photo licensed from ThinkStock
Cover design & illustration by Reagent Press
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 Reagent Press
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REAGENT PRESS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 1
The black Doberman stood waist-high and watched me with yellow eyes, his upper lip curled back showing sharp, pointy teeth. I stood rigid, my breathing so shallow, if you’d put a mirror in front of my nose, you’d have sworn I was dead.
The dog’s owner had an ugly looking machine gun pointed at me. Until then, I’d never bought into that whole thing about dogs and their owners looking alike. If that was the last thought that went through my head before the lights went out permanently, I was really going to be bummed; still it was hard not to see this guy as the dog’s human equivalent. Shaved head. Rough beard. Chunk out of his ear. Jagged teeth. Bad breath. Wearing more black than Johnny Cash. Black muscle-shirt. Black handgun in a black leather belt and holster. Black cargo pants tucked into black combat boots.
I winced as three more just like him, each with a dog, stormed past us and disappeared through the yacht’s fantail door. The Doberman gave me a look with his evil yellow eyes and bared his teeth. Any more movement and I’d be able to hit the high notes with Frankie Valli.
Although the 155-foot yacht, a vintage Feadship recently rechristened the Venetian, was tied-up in a busy marina in Salvador, Brazil, and Mr. Man-In-Black and I were standing in plain sight on the fantail, no one shouted, no one pointed, no one seemed at all alarmed. I wondered if that nonchalance stemmed from these guys being some sort of police S.W.A.T. team. If they were police, they wore no badges. If they were paramilitary, they wore no insignia or rank. I had a sickening feeling these guys didn’t exist. Labels had been removed from their clothes, their fingerprints obliterated by acid, their DNA rendered untraceable. Nor would there be any way to find out who hired them. It would have been arranged by pre-paid cells, money wired in and out of foreign banks, and when the job was fini one of my ears would be sent to a P.O. Box as proof for final payment.
Angry shouts in Portuguese drifted up from below decks. I wanted to turn and see what was happening. I shut my eyes instead. I didn’t need to look to know what they found.
There were twelve suitcases of high-quality cocaine stashed in the yacht’s various staterooms and a dead body chilling in the wine fridge. None of it my fault.
Chapter 2
Orlando, Florida. One-Month Earlier.
“You screwed-up.” Those three words were delivered to my Bluetooth earpiece in a tone icy enough to cause frostbite. I didn’t let the threat distract me. I was driving my silver blue Subaru Outback in heavy traffic—everybody flying, nobody getting along—on I-4 headed out of downtown Orlando, Florida. Horns were honking. Fingers were flying. Cars were changing lanes as if lanes were an optional concept. It was a forty-mile-game of dodge ‘em I played three times a week.
Name’s Will Taggert. I’m an attorney, and if there’s one thing I am, it’s diligent. Although, tenacious runs a close second. “Not possible,” I countered to the charge of screwing-up.
Banning Sloane, Chairman of Inland Bank & Trust, my biggest client, and the voice in my ear, gave an amused chuckle. “You’ll think differently when you see the photos. You need to get here immediately.”
“I can’t, Ban. I’m on my way to a meeting at my father’s nurs—”
“Touching, but I don’t care. This has to do with the Cabrera matter.” He rang off.
The Cabrera matter.
That explained the urgency. Cabrera was Sloane’s nemesis. If I had missed something, Sloane would make my life miserable until I corrected the mistake. I smacked the wheel with the palm of my hand in frustration, looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a black Chrysler 300 with tinted windows inches from my bumper, a car riding his. All part of a conga line that stretched farther than I could see. The other lanes weren’t any better. Ahead, a green and white overhead sign appeared. Next exit: quarter of a mile. If I missed it, my next chance wouldn’t come for twelve long miles. I crossed myself and cut the wheel hard to the right, swerving crazily across two lanes of traffic. I’m sure the cry of outrage from behind me was heard all the way to Tallahassee.
Twenty-one minutes later, Jessica, Sloane’s executive assistant, escorted me into his inner sanctum.
Sloane stood behind his desk. He glanced our way, beckoned me in with a twitch of his fingers.
How shall I describe Banning Sloane? Picture a young Robert Redford. Same chiseled face, penetrating blue eyes, engaging smile, boyish head of hair. Like Redford, he wore clothes well. He should. He had them custom tailored. That day, he wore a yellow power tie, white shirt, gold cuff links and collar stay, dark gray wide pin-stripe suit, and alligator loafers. Here’s the thing: one of Sloane’s ties cost more than one of my suits, one of his suits cost more than my car, one of his cars cost more than my condo. And his house cost over $18-million—more than I’ll ever make in my lifetime.
On his massive desk was a folder I knew well. The Cabrera file. Most of that five-inch stack of dead trees, I’d prepared. On top of the folder were several eight-by-ten black and white photos. Sloane tapped the photos with his solid gold Mont Blanc fountain pen.
I looked at the top one. Not Ansel Adams. Not Annie Leibovitz. Maybe Homer Simpson with a cell phone.
“That’s the Venetian. Cabrera bought her a year ago for just under a million.”
I looked closer. It was a nice boat, but a million? Please.
Sloane let out a long-suffering sigh. “How could you have missed something the size of a yacht?”
My job as his attorney on a commercial workout was to find and return as many assets as possible to the bank. Here’s how that works. If a company stops making payments on its line of credit, the bank goes after the company’s assets to make good the loan. My job is to do the legal work so the bank can essentially take whatever the company has left. For Inland Bank & Trust, I’d gone after the assets of car dealerships, fast food franchises, manufacturing operations, and homebuilders like Cabrera.
“I found everything Cabrera had,” I s
hot back. “Including the Escalade he leased in a fake name for one of his mistresses. No way I missed a yacht.”
Sloane tapped the photo with his pen, again. “A photo is worth a thousand mea culpas. Accept it, you screwed up.” He glowered at me. “Now I need you to rectify your mistake.”
I braced for what was coming. Sloane was my biggest client. If he pulled his business, I’d be in a world of hurt.
My dad, Bill Taggert, had Alzheimer’s. Diagnosed two years ago, he was in his third private facility. As the disease progressed, dad started acting out. He hit one of his nurses, which got him booted from the first facility. At the second facility, he pushed another patient who fell and broke an arm. So we’re now at our third home, this one farther away and much, much more expensive. To pay for dad’s care, I’d dissolved my practice of family and immigration law and concentrated on doing more lucrative commercial workouts.
When I started with Sloane, he had multiple attorneys handling his workouts. I’d worked 80, 90 hours a week to earn more of his business and was now doing the bulk of it.
Sloane eyed me sternly. “I want you to get on a plane, fly to Rio and bring me back that yacht.”
Chapter 3
“You’re not firing me?”
Sloane gave me the look a patrician father might give his underachieving son. “Why would I fire you? That boat is our property and I want to make sure it’s returned to us.” He sat down in his desk chair, languidly adjusted the crease of his trouser leg, eyed me standing there. “Oh, for goodness sake, Will, get the shocked look off your face and sit down. I’ve got arrangements I need to go over with you.”
I plopped down in one of the visitor’s chairs.
“You have an up-to-date passport?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” He slid a reservation sheet across the desk to me. “There’s a flight to Rio that leaves tonight. Jessica’s booked you a seat. I’ve also arranged for a local man—Ray Nunez—to meet you at the airport, take you to your hotel, and to the boat the next day.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.” Sloane always makes it sound easier than it is. “I can’t just fly to another country and take someone else’s property. This has to be handled within their legal system so that our claim is legally recognized. I’m going to need to work with local counsel to do that, and even with local help, this won’t be quick or easy. It would be better to work from here, get everything lined-up, go down later—“
“Screw that,” Sloane said dismissively. “Just go down there and get the damn boat.”
“No way,” I pushed back. “That’s theft, Ban, and you know it. I’m not going to end-up in some Brazilian jail because you want this done in a hurry.”
Sloane’s face reddened. He hates being called out. “Your flight’s booked,” he said coldly. “I expect you to be on it.” He stood, his way of telling me this meeting was over.
I remained seated. His part of the meeting might have been over, mine wasn’t. I still had questions. “Why have me go? Have Nunez bring the boat back for you. He’s already there.”
He glared at me. “Nunez is ex-DEA. I hired him to get you to the boat and sweep it for drugs.”
“Drugs? Are there—”
“Oh, relax.” He let out a big breath. “I’m not saying there are drugs on the boat. But if there were—and the Coast Guard intercepted the boat entering our territorial waters—they’d impound it. Screw that. Once Nunez sweeps the boat we know we’re clean.”
“I hear you, but after he checks it out, have him bring it back,” I persisted. “There’s no reason to send me down there.”
“Let me finish,” he said visibly annoyed. “Nunez tells me Cabrera had a great deal of work done to the boat. I want you to negotiate down those charges. Once you’ve negotiated with these…” He shook his head and said, “…boat people…” in the most condescending way, “…and have control of the asset, I want you on that boat at all times. I don’t want it disappearing. Understand me?”
“Disappear? Why would it disappear?”
Sloane looked at me as if I were a simpleton. “Will, it’s a yacht worth over a million bucks. If it’s left unattended someone will try to make off with it. You’re there to prevent that.”
“Again, wouldn’t your ex-DEA agent be better at protecting this yacht. I’ve never met the guy, but I’m sure he’s had more training than I have on dealing with threats.”
Exasperated, he bowed his head and slowly shook it. “As usual, you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. There aren’t going to be any problems. I’ve got this organized.” He took a deep cleansing breath. “Instead of being argumentative, you should be thanking me. I’m sending you on an all-expense-paid vacation on a private yacht. You’re going to have fun.” He punched-up fun trying to make it sound, well, fun. It sounded anything but.
Of all Sloane’s fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants schemes, this was by far the worst.
I sighed, got to my feet, held out my hand for the reservation sheet. He handed it to me along with the Cabrera file and a warning: “Will, this is important to me, so I want you to call and update me daily. I don’t want a day missed, understood?”
“Uh, that’s going to be a problem,” I told him as he walked me to the door. “My cell isn’t—“
“Jessica has a satellite phone for you.”
I turned and gawked. That was uncharacteristically organized of him.
“Daily,” he repeated before the door shut behind me.
“Ohmygawd,” Jessica gushed when I stopped at her desk. “Rio. Your own private yacht.” She handed me the sat phone. “You are so lucky.”
Despite the OMG, Jessica’s no airhead. Her job gave her a view of the bank’s inner workings. “Why the rush? What’s he not telling me?”
Chapter 4
Jessica gave me a conspiratorial smile and said in a hushed voice. “He’s worried the stockholders and bank examiners are going to gut him like a fish. He figures if he can get that boat and sell it for a bundle before he has to write-off—”
“The write-off’s a hundred million. That boat? Not going to make a dent.”
She shrugged. “You know that. I know that. Sloane? He thinks he can get a bundle for it. Plus, it’s Cabrera’s boat, so there’s the gloat factor.”
“Really? He gloats.”
“Oh, big time. This is Cabrera we’re talking about. You know how that gets him cranked up.”
Boy, did I ever. The two had history.
When Sloane first met him, Garcia Cabrera was a small-time homebuilder. He put up—in a good year—maybe three $300,000 market homes. While his homes were pretty vanilla, Cabrera wasn’t. When he walked into a room, women swooned, men pointed him out as a manly man. He had movie star good looks, Latin charm, and a bombshell wife.
He and Sloane immediately hit it off. He was the perfect complement to Sloane’s Brahmin banker persona. Cabrera and his wife, Nina, became Ban and Heather Sloane’s constant companions. Sloane introduced Cabrera to important people, got him publicity, helped him with the financing he needed for growth. Seemingly overnight, Cabrera went from building teensy-tiny market homes to McMansions priced five million and up.
At the height of the Florida real estate boom, Cabrera approached Sloane with a grand vision for a development of about 120 very upscale homes to be called San Marco Square. The community was patterned on Venice, Italy and had an elaborate system of canals, a town square modeled on the actual San Marco with boutique shops and restaurants, and even a life-size replica of the Bridge of Sighs. The concept drawings were gorgeous. The prospectus talked about San Marco Square becoming Florida’s version of Beverly Hills.
Sloane chugged the Kool-Aid. Where normally Inland would have been one of a number of banks participating in financing the development, Sloane had his bank finance the entire project. In fact, he was so smitten he bought the first lot and had Cabrera design a 6,000 sq. ft. home to go on it.
With Inland as a virtual blank check, C
abrera set off to spend money. The two couples made trips to Italy for research. Artisans were hired to assist the architects in making the structures on the town square authentic. Once an acceptable olde world vibe permeated the plans, construction began.
As soon as the public relations kick-off shot of Cabrera and Sloane—each with a foot on the head of a shovel and grinning broadly for the cameras—was taken, a swarm of yellow earthmovers descended on the site. It looked like a Caterpillar family reunion. There were articulated trucks. Scrapers. Loaders. Bulldozers. Backhoes. Excavators. Compactors. Graders. All seemingly hell-bent on creating as much dust, dirt, and noise as possible.
Streets and canals took shape, footers were poured for the Square. The sheer number of people working on the project meant things were accomplished quickly. In three months, all the site and infrastructure work was finished; in six months the facades of the buildings that were to comprise San Marco Square were complete.
About that time, work started on Ban and Heather Sloane’s home. The original plans were for a 6,000 sq. ft. Mediterranean Revival style house with an $8-million price tag. Of course, that was before creep set in.
Creep is that insidious phenomenon that affects those having a custom home built. For example, the home’s original plans called for a modest wine cellar to hold a thousand bottles. However, since this was Ban and Heather’s dream home, they thought why not make the cellar a little bigger. And, poof, before they knew it, the cellar had grown to five thousand bottles with an adjoining tasting room.
On the original plans, Heather’s closet was a 10 ft. by 12 ft. walk-in. With creep, it grew to 24 ft. by 30 ft. and was to have a sky-blue domed ceiling painted with fluffy white clouds.
Small potatoes compared to the kitchen. The original plans had a generously sized gourmet kitchen with everything—two refrigerators, two dishwashers, prep sink, double ovens, commercial gas range, gigantic island. But Ban and Heather couldn’t agree on the selection of cabinets or granite countertops, so they decided to build his and hers kitchens. Since neither of them really cooked, they also had to have a serving kitchen for the help.