Clint Faraday Mysteries collection A Muddled Murders Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  Clint thought. He hadn’t noticed him in any place to compare. “Somewhere between five seven and six two. Somewhere between one eighty and two forty, depending on his height. Somewhere between forty and sixty.

  “Great lord! He’s distinctive, even to jewelry, but you can’t quite be sure ... this is weird!”

  “We call him ‘The Chamaeleon’. It’s almost a psy talent with him. You can talk to him somewhere and meet him again a hour later and not remember. He’s thirty one. He’ll manage to meet you a bit later at, say, Refugio?” Manolo suggested. Clint agreed.

  “Mr. Clint Faraday? Gordy Walsh,” The Chamaemeon introduced.

  “Clint. Glad to meet you. Manolo has the highest praise for you.”

  “He’s a good man. You will wish to know my connection with the death of the junkie last evening.

  “Purely chance. My basic concentration was on Louisa Abandia. She merely happened to be there when Maria passed some drugs from Julio’s pocket into Benton’s libations. Had I known they would prove fatal I would have stopped it.”

  “You saw her do it?”

  “Oh, certainly. She wasn’t very subtle. Went over twice to ask for a light. They were all too drunk to notice anything. Abandia is much more professional. She is able to convince even the most adroit drug processors of her undying loyalty – which she possesses, but only for herself. The missing money is because she took it right under Julio’s nose. Benton was in the picture only slightly, but was blamed.”

  “Where did he get his money?”

  “I don’t know. He was never the object of my attention.”

  They chatted for a few minutes, then Gordy left. Clint thought, then went to the Tropical Suites to ask Steve Malcolm bluntly where Benton got his money.

  “In Las Vegas. He did a stinkeroo show there and hit a jackpot on a machine. Fifty thousand. Why?”

  “Because someone added one and one and got thirty,” Clint answered. “Good night!”

  Deadly Serious

  “Looks like a storm brewing,” Sam Caldwell, a resident from the US, said to Clint.

  Clint was at (water) Taxi 25 at 6:30 AM to greet some other gringos who were coming to visit Isla Colón and Bocas del Toro. There were some very ominous clouds just to the northeast in the Caribbean. Clint knew this meant little. It would probably move southeast and maybe brush the islands with some light rain.

  “Not anything serious,” Clint answered. “They build in the Caribbean and move just offshore to the southeast. It may come in at Chiriqui Grande or east of there.”

  “East? Wouldn’t that make them moving away from land?”

  “No. People forget that Panamá runs west to east, not north to south.”

  Sam looked at the rising sun and shook his head. He was looking slightly to his right. “I’ve totally lost my sense of direction here!

  “You said Chiriqui Grande? That’s where I’m going. I hope it doesn’t meet me there!”

  “Two hours or a little more. It’ll be past,” Clint said as the taxi from Almirante swung to come to the dock. “Your boat’s loading. The red stripe. Get on quick or you’ll miss the good seats. No chop yet, so the center will be good. With chop you want the rear.”

  “Why?”

  “The boat is least battered back by the motors. The front is out of the water. The waves beat up the front and are not much in the rear.”

  “Logical! Thanks!” Sam got on the boat as the other unloaded. Walter and Amanda Morton got off the taxi and greeted Clint. He said he had rooms for them at the Bahia, but they wouldn’t check in until after twelve, so they could leave their bags with a friend of his at Starfleet Tours.

  “Was that Caldwell you were talking to?” Walt asked.

  “I think he said Caldwell. Know him?”

  “Know OF him. Be careful. He’s bad news.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s in deep on some kind of land deal around Rambala, Punta Pena and Mali. It’s a scam. ROP and they sell to gringos and Europeans, then a year later some Indio comes to tell them to get the hell off of his property. They don’t mention that foreigners can’t own ROP land.”

  “That’s true, but ROP is government land that no one can own, in that sense. The scam is when the Indio files for a titulo. He gets the land. You can own structures on ROP, but not the land. They wait until you have a fancy house and get the land, then deny you access to your fancy house.”

  “I hear Nick Bardini got around that when he knew what they were pulling before he bought the place. He had the front door of his house against the easement rim and put a wooden walkway across the ditch, then built a good fence around the whole half hectare. They got the land, but he wouldn’t let them cross his structures to get onto it. They paid the couple of dollars per meter for the titulo and he had the upper hand. He bought the titulo for double the per meter cost and now has a nice place not far from Mali that he got dirt cheap.

  “Of course, the fact he’s connected to the mob from the states didn’t hurt anything!”

  “Well, you don’t mess with the mob here. The locals are amateurs, but the bigger ones from the states, China and Russia are able to eat them up and spit them out. They use them.”

  Walt nodded and said, “I hear Caldwell has an issue with them that could get serious – deadly serious.”

  “That’s really easy to turn right back on them if you know the system here,” Nancy Gaines, a local woman who worked with land scam deals for the police, explained. “There isn’t much that can be done after the fact, but you can outcon the cons.”

  “Like I did?” Clint asked, grinning.

  “What did you do?”

  “I bought the ROP and filed for titulo the same day. When dear old Rubio tried to file on the ROP as a Panamanian he found it was already titled land and he couldn’t touch it.”

  “What I’d suggest!” she said. “You can get an ROP damned cheap, particularly when they’re planning to use the old scam. File for your own title and they’re fucked, not you.

  “What did you pay for that place?”

  “Including the title process, twenty four grand.”

  “About a third of what it’s worth. You worked against those kinds of crooks in Florida and knew how to get around them. Good show!”

  Clint’s cellular buzzed. It was Sergio Valdez, the violent crimes chief of the Policia National.

  “Yo, Serg! Que tal?”

  “Good morning, Clint. I have something that might interest you – or not.

  “You were talking with Samuel Caldwell yesterday morning at Taxi Twenty Five?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seems he’s run into a bit of a problem in Mali and wants you to be contacted before he lets us get involved. His wife and daughter are missing and he claims it’s an extortion deal.”

  “He has a nerve to go to the police for that kind of thing! I hear he’s running land scams there.”

  “Probably. I should tell him to fuck off?”

  Clint thought, then said he’d go to Mali to meet Caldwell and discuss some things. He told Nancy there was a problem, then went to his place to throw a few things into a maleta, talked with his neighbor, Judi Lum, then headed for the water taxi and the bus to Mali.

  Phase one

  “Okay, what’s the deal?” Clint demanded of Sam Caldwell three and a half hours later.

  “Linda and Frances were kidnapped last night. I think they’re going to be held for ransom!”

  “Bullshit! Tell me the truth or I head back to Bocas on the next bus!”

  “Okay. It’s not for that, it’s for something else. I just want them to be alright. I want you to find them and make whatever deal you have to make. I’ll handle it after they’re back.”

  “Depending on what it’s about, I’ll agree. If it’s about you ripping off someone with your scams that cost some pensioner his life savings it’s no deal. I’ll arbitrate to save your family, but not to protect you. Clear?”

  “I heard you’re like t
hat. I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “No. You’re now in the position you’ve put a lot of others. Enjoy!”

  “I think I could like you. I know I can trust you. Deal! You’re now running the show. How much for a retainer?”

  “Two grand five. If it costs more you get billed. If it costs less you get a refund.”

  Caldwell went to a little safe set in concrete and handed Clint $2,500 in cash. There was at least fifty thousand in cash in that safe. Clint shoved it into his pocket and said he’d be in touch. Go to Bocas or David and wait for a call.

  “I want to be here!” Caldwell cried.

  “To get your family killed? What? You’re that stupid?”

  He thought, then agreed to go to Changuinola. He had a house there. Clint Okay’ed that.

  Clint went to the restaurant by the bombas (gas pumps) in Chiriqui Grande and sat at a table in the Bocas end. He knew full well the abductors would have noted him meeting with Caldwell and would have someone get in touch with him.

  A sandwich and a Balboa later two Indios came to ask him if they could talk with him. He waved for them to sit and ordered them a meal and soda. He said Caldwell was paying for it, so get the most expensive things on the menu if they liked.

  “I’m David Miguel and he’s Jorge Smith,” one of them introduced. “You’re Mr. Clint.”

  “No ‘mister,’ just Clint. What’s it about? You can get into deadly serious trouble if you kidnap anyone. If they get hurt in any way ... please be careful.”

  “We can talk to you. You treat us like people. The police won’t and the lawyers won’t and the blacks won’t and the courts won’t,” Jorge said. “We knew he would call you and not the police. Sanchez saw you talking to him on yesterday morning and knows you will help.

  “They will not be hurt. They will see how we are forced to live when a ladron steals our land and we have no way to support our families.

  “We want our land back! It is the only way we can support our families!”

  “Tell me about it. If he’s scammed you out of your land I promise you he’ll deeply regret it and he’ll support your families very well for the rest of your lives.”

  “He has those blacks to file for our land and claim they were living on it and farming on it for more than five years, then the people at reforma agraria will not listen to us or to the people who know we were there for generations and that we were farming the land for our families,” David explained. “The police come and make us leave and will not allow us to return. He can sell the land to gringos and we have nothing.”

  “The wife and daughter have nothing to do with it.”

  “The hija, no. The esposa is Panamanian and has many titulos in her name,” Jorge said. “She is worse than him.”

  “I see. We’ll turn his scam around on him! This is what we’ll do. I warned him that if he was scamming pensionados out of their life’s savings I wouldn’t protect him an inch. To do that to you is even worse because retiros will have their seguridad social even when all their savings are gone. You’re left with nothing. We’ll see he’s left with nothing. He’s much too young to get social security and his wife’s Panamanian, so won’t get anything. Here’s what we’ll do.”

  “We will do what you say,” they both agreed.

  Clint leaned closer to talk. Caldwell went by in the fancy car his wife usually drove. He wouldn’t think the Indios had anything to do with it because Clint was always close with them. Caldwell would think he was being charitable and buying them a meal. Maybe he was getting information from them.

  Well, he was!

  Phase two

  “You’ve used your scam on some people you should have checked on a little better,” Clint told Caldwell on the phone. “Those people are the parents of some other people who operate in Panamá. They are not amused. They grabbed your wife – who they tell me is worse than you so far as the scams go – and daughter, who’s a pain-in-the-ass spoiled brat, to get your full attention. These people will kill the two of them in a pretty horrible way and take a short nap before going out to pick up whores this evening. I don’t know what they’ll demand. They have your family in a place you wouldn’t ever think of. So far, they’re not hurt in any way. They just have to live the way the people you’ve scammed are forced to live. They say that the luxuries are gone and your daughter is a real prize, complaining that she can’t eat that garbage and she CERTAINLY isn’t about to sleep on that AWFUL FILTHY bed! There isn’t even a TV or DVD player! She has the gall to demand that they buy her food she can eat!

  “Your wife lived not much different several times before you met her. She has it pretty good, really, and knows it. She isn’t totally spoiled rotten.

  “These people don’t live like the common dirt farmers. They’re used to luxuries. If it was natives your lovely family would learn a thing or two about how a lot of people are forced to live here.

  “I can only wait until they tell me what to do. It could come today or not for a week. I can figure it’s going to include giving them the land they’ve paid for. Those people are a hell of a lot more adept at this kind of crap than you’ll ever be. They’ve been doing it for generations. One of the people you scammed was in charge of a ... group in Texas. They made their money a lot like you took them for. They know the drill and you’d very damned well better know you can’t hope to get any protection here. You can’t pay off the police with ten percent of what they have. Money or other considerations.

  “I’ll be in touch. You may have the bad luck to’ve pulled this act on someone who’s looked back at what they did and want to redeem themselves with the lord for their past sins. They’re Catholic to the Nth degree and want to assuage their guilt. I hope to hell you haven’t crossed the line with what you’ve done to people here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! The mafia? I checked on everyone!”

  “Are you such an amateur that you thought that kind of information wouldn’t be hidden from you? Do you think you’re more clever than those people? Even Marko Bocinni was able to go somewhere and disappear from sight! Are you that stupid?

  “If so ... God! I’m sorry as hell I got involved with this! You’ll get me killed along with your family!”

  Caldwell was almost crying. His voice shook as he said, “Clint, find out what I have to do! They just have to let my daughter go. I don’t care that much about Linda, but Frances is my life! I’ll get their land back. I still have most of it. Let me know which ones. Please, Clint! Please!”

  “If you know which ones you’ll know who came here to ... I’ll see what they’ll work out. Be careful you don’t end up with information that’s more deadly than some pitiful land fraud. Do NOT even try to find which ones are doing this. They came here to disappear from view.

  “Caldwell, these people have more money than Panamá. They couldn’t care less about it except that they liked the places they bought. They could buy anywhere and not miss a few hundred grand here. What I heard is that ... I’ll call you later. Don’t answer calls from anyone but me and, for God’s sake! do NOT make any stupid calls to anyone you think can help you yourself! If this wo ... person has become a religious fanatic we might be in for pure hell for awhile. God! I wish I hadn’t ever heard of you!

  “Clear?”

  “Whatever you say. I swear!”

  Clint rang off and grinned an evil grin.

  Phase three

  “Clint! It’s been two DAYS!” Caldwell whined when Clint called him. “What do they WANT?”

  “I have an appointment in an hour with someone. I suppose I’ll get an explanation as to what they demand. I called you just to let you know I’m meeting someone. It might have something to do with this or it might be something else entirely. I personally think it’s this BECAUSE it was unspecific.

  “I’ll call you later. How are you getting along”

  “I’m miserable! I can’t sleep or eat and I can’t go anywhere!”

  “Hang in.
A little longer.”

  He hung up and went to the restaurant by the bombas. It was Saturday morning and Clint knew there were a lot of religious people who were going around with their books and pamphlets. He would manage to speak with some of them. He didn’t doubt for one second Caldwell would have someone watching. He wanted to spot who.

  Sure as sunset four Seventh Day Adventists came to try to convert him. He sat at the table with them for a few minutes, then leaned back and had another cup of coffee when they left. Another group came, he spoke with them more shortly. A lawyer from David that Clint knew slightly came to sit and chat. He soon got on the bus to David.

  A crooked lawyer from Bocas, Manuel Something-or-other saw him and waved for permission to sit with him until the bus to Bocas left. He waved to the seat. This one would be the watcher. He said the wrong things and knew too much. Clint said he was waiting to meet some people about a business deal. It WAS Panamá! They were only an hour late now.

  The bus to Bocas left. The lawyer managed to be in the restroom and missed it. Yeah, right!

  Some Indios came by on an old truck. Clint waved. An Indio came walking from the pineapple farm and asked if he was Mr. Faraday. He said he was. The Indio handed him a note. He managed to not quite hide it. It simply said that having Manuel Moraveras there was just plain stupid. Another appointment would be made. They were growing impatient.

  Clint gave Moraveras a withering look, stood and said, “I can’t believe Caldwell could be this stupid!” and stalked off to hail a cab.

  Phase four

  “Clint! What went wrong?!” Caldwell cried.

  “You’re not dealing with some gringo idiot who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground! How can you be so stupid as to send that damned crooked lawyer to check on these people? What? You don’t have the brains to figure ... Christ! Now we have to wait until they think they’ve taught you a lesson. They’ll know damned well I didn’t have anyone there to fuck up the deal! You can hope they don’t decide to knock off one of your family to send you a message!