"Orgies with alien beings from outer space?" one of the geeks ventured.
"Close, Greg. That’s closer than you think," Jerry said, with a teasing smile.
The others sat silently, waiting.
When Jerry had milked the pause fully, he said, "Zombies," in an artificially low-pitched voice.
"Get out!" Henrietta said, punching him playfully on the shoulder. "You spent the week with your bots searching for zombies; you must have had to do some work just to store all the hits. Gotta be terabytes worth of just links, Jer!"
"Well, there were some qualifiers to narrow it a little. Like, real living creatures that you can touch and feel."
"Wasn’t there something about a guy in Haiti 25 or 30 years ago that claimed he’d been zombified and escaped, or something?" Greg asked.
"Yeah, Greg. Good for you. That’s just where I started."
"So, where’d you finish, Jer?" Henrietta asked.
"You want the ‘where’ or the ‘what,’ Hen? Can’t have both. Client confidentiality."
"What!" several voices exclaimed in a chorus.
"I got several hits. Live zombies, right in the real world. Down to specific locations."
"Okay, that’s all I can tell you, guys. Your turn, Greg. Whose firewalls have you been punching holes in this week?"
****
It was much later in the evening, and the sun-worshippers of South Beach had disappeared, replaced by strange nocturnal beings. Greg Elliot kept a wary eye out as he swayed down the crowded sidewalk, avoiding the more outrageous looking creatures that leered at him suggestively. He had stayed behind when his friends dispersed earlier in the evening, moving inside to take a seat at the bar. He had been drinking more heavily than usual. He was lost in thought, pondering Jerry’s comments on the zombie search as he walked back to the condo he shared with a couple of other guys in South Beach. He had done his best not to betray his surprise at their happy hour gathering, but he had been stunned to hear about Jerry’s latest project.
While he had been in RDF’s office installing some new video editing software earlier that afternoon, he had overheard a telephone conversation. RDF was describing his next gig to someone, probably trying to raise money from the sound of it. Greg hadn’t really been paying much attention, but he couldn’t help picking up that RDF had somebody "… in the islands, checking out the Haitians. If we can’t find real zombies, well, hell, we’ll just make our own." He hadn’t thought much about it at the time; RDF was always talking about off-the-wall ideas. Now, though, Jerry was contracted to someone looking for zombies.
Greg wondered if Jerry’s client was his own employer. If so, he would be seriously pissed off. He could have been doing that search. Why would RDF hire a contract computer geek without even talking to his own in-house guy? It didn’t make sense, but it was suspicious. Greg decided that once he was home, he would log into the production company’s network and poke around in the accounting system. He knew enough about the accounting software; he had set it up. If Jerry had a contract with RDF Productions, he could find out about it. Then he would decide whether to be pissed at RDF or at Jerry. He clenched his teeth and concentrated on speed-walking the remaining mile to his place. He needed to work off his irritation. This whole thing might still just be a coincidence.
Chapter 5
Martinez sat at the desk in his hotel room, a yellow legal pad in front of him and a felt-tipped pen in hand. He thought best with pen and paper; his jottings and scribbles were indecipherable, even to him, but the act of marking the paper somehow stimulated his thoughts.
He was struggling to develop a plausible extension of the story that he had given the houngan; he would have to come up with some way to motivate the houngan’s participation in drugging several people over a period of a few weeks. He considered his alternatives. One option would be to send someone to Martinique to study with the houngan, but his recent detailed study of Voodoo led him to think that the process would not be easily taught nor could it be quickly learned.
He had come to realize that Voodoo was a true religion, and that its priests and priestesses spent years developing their beliefs and learning the supporting rituals. He recognized that the houngan probably couldn’t be induced to isolate and teach one small part of a complex body of ritual, especially if he were being asked to teach it to an outsider, a non-believer. Martinez’s younger brother, Ricardo, was a Roman Catholic priest. Martinez quickly drew a parallel, sketching a section of railroad track as he thought about it. He imagined asking his brother to teach an unbeliever the steps required to consecrate the Eucharist. Such a notion would not only be repulsive to Ricardo; it would be meaningless. To reduce a complex, interrelated set of beliefs and symbols to an almost mechanical process was unrealistic. Although the houngan had indicated that the process was "…medicine, not magic," when he was describing it, Martinez knew that the man would see it differently if asked to codify the steps necessary to reduce a human being to a mindless animal.
Martinez had only brief personal contact with the houngan while he was in Martinique a few days ago, but he had met and spoken with several members of the man’s congregation. He recalled the bartender at the hotel and the maid to whom the bartender had introduced him. Then there was the taxi driver who had picked him up and driven him into the hills. When the taxi stopped, two men had blindfolded him and led him gently but firmly over several miles of rock-strewn paths before stopping at the shack in the cane field where the houngan had been waiting with his creature. All those people had shown great respect and deference toward the houngan; they had the same attitude toward him that Ricardo’s parishioners exhibited toward Martinez’s brother. Martinez had expected that they would be frightened of a man that, to Martinez, was nothing more than a witch doctor, but he had seen no evidence of anything but fond respect and blind loyalty.
Martinez had gotten to where he was by being a keen observer of the people around him. He had spent hours since his return absorbing as much material as he could find on the topic of Voodoo. He had been surprised at what he had learned, and he was able to integrate his new knowledge with what he had seen in his brief contacts with the Haitians in Martinique.
Before he had done his research, he had considered finding someone with the knowledge of pharmacology necessary to replicate the potions that were used in the making of the creature. While Martinez was certain that this could be done, his studies had convinced him that there was a great deal more art than science involved in compounding and administering the potions. The houngan’s knowledge represented many generations of trial and error. It encompassed not just the compounding of a drug, but also the intuition required to evaluate the recipient’s mental and physical reactions as the potions were administered. Martinez didn’t have time to start from scratch. He needed someone with the required skills.
He considered that he could find other Voodoo priests, but from his study, he knew that very few of them would have had the experience of actually carrying out the process. He knew he had been lucky to find this man as readily as he had. Now, he needed some way to motivate the houngan. There was always money, and Martinez would certainly try that, but he sensed that greed was not an element of the houngan’s makeup. Extortion of some form would most likely be required, which necessitated a background study on the individual. Martinez thought briefly about assigning the task to one of his minions but he decided that it was too critical to delegate. It would be better to put them to work finding and establishing a base camp in south Florida. He would have to go back to Martinique and figure out what leverage he could acquire to bend the houngan to his will.
****
Marie Dubois expertly made up the queen-sized bed, listening absent-mindedly to the music blaring from the television on the dresser. She had already stripped the room, emptied the trash cans into the bag on her cart, run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet at aerobic speed, and scrubbed the bathroom. She was on the last steps in her routine now. She put the
finishing touches on the bed, turned and grabbed an armload of towels from her cart, and stepped quickly into the bathroom, mechanically distributing the various-sized towels to their appropriate places. She took a plastic bag with an assortment of complimentary toiletries from the pocket of her apron, tore it open with her teeth, and set the toiletries on the vanity beside the sink, arranging them neatly on the little tray. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand and went back into the room, giving everything a final check as she turned off the television set. She didn’t like the music videos on MTV, but she had been taught to work to the fast rhythm of the disco soundtrack. It helped her to make up the rooms in the brief time that her supervisor allowed.
Finished with her allotted rooms now, she pushed the cart back to the maids’ closet and put it away. After lunch, she and the other maids would clean the public areas of the hotel. She took a greasy paper bag from her locker and let herself out the back door of the maids’ closet, joining the other Haitians on the little enclosed patio where they ate lunch every day. Her friend Annie had saved a space for her at the rough wooden table and Marie sat down, sighing with exhaustion. Annie had worked for several years as a maid before being promoted to a job as a reservations clerk. She didn’t earn any more money than she had as a maid, but she worked inside in the air-conditioning, and she didn’t have to wear the hot, starched uniform all day. Of course, that meant that she had to spend money for clothes, but to Marie, it seemed a small price to pay to be comfortable and work sitting down.
"So, Marie, any treasures today?" Annie asked, smiling.
"No, nothing," Marie said, opening her lunch bag carefully. Sometimes people left things behind when they vacated the rooms. Most of the maids were honest, like Marie, and they would give valuables to the supervisor, to be kept in case the owner called or returned, looking for the item. There were often other things, though – things that the wealthy people discarded, rather than packing. Marie had found various items of clothing, partially used toiletries, bottles of liquor, and food. These were Annie’s treasures, and the members of the hotel staff often traded such items with one another. In the case of the people like Annie, they would trade for a few minutes on one of the telephones or a few pencils or sheets of paper that their children could use.
"Are there any exciting guests coming, Annie? Movie stars?" Marie asked her friend.
"No, but that Venezuelan man is coming back, that Señor Martinez, the handsome one." Annie was single, and always had an eye for attractive male guests.
"The one who wanted to see the zombie," Marie said. "Did you speak with him?"
"No, someone, some woman, she called to make the arrangements. He is coming four days from now. I thought that you might wish to tell the houngan."
"Why will you not tell him, Annie?"
"Oh, I have a date for dinner this evening. It is possible that I will not be coming to the bateye, tonight," Annie said, a mischievous gleam in her eye.
"The same man? The one who delivers the wine and spirits?" Marie asked, smiling.
"Mais oui!"
****
Greg Elliot sat at the desk in the corner of his bedroom, staring at the screen of his laptop with bleary eyes. He sat back and picked up his mug, taking a sip of lukewarm coffee as he massaged his temples. He had been through the books at RDF Productions and Jerry Smith didn’t show up as a vendor to RDF. Greg had considered that the relationship could be hidden in one of the limited partnerships that RDF often entered into for projects. He had been briefly excited when he found a partnership called Living Dead Productions.
That sounded like a zombie-oriented operation to him, and he went through the books line by line. There was a lot of money changing hands through that one, most of it coming in from investors. There was only one vendor account associated with LDP so far. That was a Charles P. Johnson, Ph.D. There were several paid invoices in the file, listing "consulting services rendered" and "travel expenses." Looking further at the travel expenses, Greg saw that most of that money was spent chartering a yacht. When he found that the yacht was based in the Caribbean, he gave up on that line of inquiry. Greg reasoned that even Jerry couldn’t cover his tracks that well.
As he had been digging through the books, it had occurred to Greg that there might be an opportunity for him in this. Since Jerry’s client appeared to be someone other than RDF and since both Jerry’s client and RDF were hunting "real zombies," Greg might be able to find some leverage to improve his position with RDF. Jerry said he found zombies; if Greg could figure out where Jerry’s zombies were, then he could barter the information to RDF, perhaps in exchange for a partnership of some sort in one of the productions.
Greg drained the mug and set it down on his desk. He logged out of RDF’s bookkeeping system and focused his talents on hacking into his friend Jerry’s computer system.
Chapter 6
Vengeance was riding comfortably to her anchor in the deep water near the entrance to Admiralty Bay in Bequia. The professor was napping in a mesh hammock, swaying gently in the shade of an awning that was stretched over the aft part of the boat. Lilly had gone ashore with Dani and Liz, and Dani was showing her around the small town while Liz stocked up on a few delicacies at the gourmet grocery store. Liz was restraining her tendency to overbuy, knowing that soon she would be in Martinique where many of the food items imported from Europe would be much less expensive. Lilly and Dani were in a small store that was really more of an art gallery. The tiny shop displayed a large selection of handmade batik fabrics in bright colors that evoked a real sense of the Caribbean, as well as locally made clothing and other crafts.
Dani managed to pretend interest for a few minutes, but she soon grew bored. To her, shopping was a goal-oriented activity; she shopped only when she wanted something specific, and she was focused on acquiring the targeted item as quickly as possible. Lilly, on the other hand, seemed to derive her pleasure from the process of looking and comparing. She talked at length with the shopkeeper, admiring the fabrics; she tried on a dress and was about to try on a crocheted bikini, after having made a detailed comparison of several of the tiny, handcrafted bathing suits. Dani, no longer able to feign interest, excused herself and stepped around the corner to the little restaurant and grocery store next door.
Dani could hear her old friend, Mrs. Walker, giving instructions to the cook back in the kitchen. Not wanting to interrupt, she stepped behind the bar and helped herself to a cold soft drink, which she carried into the open air dining room. She settled herself on the couch at the far end of the room, picked up a sailing magazine from the coffee table, and relaxed. She was fighting to stay awake a few minutes later when Mrs. Walker came in and startled her to wakefulness.
"Dani! What a nice surprise," the elegant old lady exclaimed, stretching her arms wide for a hug. Dani stood and embraced the woman. They had known each other longer than Dani could remember; Mrs. Walker’s deceased husband had been a long-time business associate of Dani’s father. Several times when Dani was a small child, she had stayed with Mrs. Walker for weeks on end while the two men travelled to undisclosed destinations, often to return jubilant, occasionally with recently healed wounds. Dani had always known not to ask where they had been or what they had been doing.
"How long will you be here?" Mrs. Walker asked, and then said, before Dani could answer, "I thought you and Liz were taking Vengeance to New England for the summer. Claude is expecting to see you in Newport. I just talked to him last night."
Smiling as she thought about Claude and how he had teased her when she was a little girl staying with his mother, Dani said, "I don’t know – it depends on our guests, but I think not for long, Nonna." She went on to tell Mrs. Walker about Lilly and the professor and their search for zombies.
"It’s so good to hear you call me Nonna. You picked that up from Claude that first time you stayed with us. I think you were about four years old."
"How is Claude?" Dani asked. "Is he enjoying
doing the day charters in Newport?"
"Oh, I suppose he is. It gives him something to do since he retired, you know." Like many men his age, Claude had served in the U.S. military in the Viet Nam era, earning U.S. citizenship in the process. He had enjoyed the military and made a career of it for 30 years. Closer to her father’s age than to Dani’s, he had often been home on leave when she stayed with Mrs. Walker as a child.
Their reminiscing was interrupted when Lilly came into the restaurant, holding up a brightly colored dress for Dani’s inspection. Dani introduced the two women, and the three of them chatted amiably while waiting for Liz to finish her provisioning and join them. By the time Liz appeared it was almost lunchtime. Mrs. Walker wanted to treat them to lunch, but Dani explained that they really needed to get back to Vengeance, as Liz had already prepared lunch and left it in the refrigerator.
"Besides, the professor is probably lonesome," she said.
"Oh! Of course. How rude of me, Dani. I forgot all about your having guests aboard. Thanks so much for stopping in. Liz, it was a pleasure to see you again, and it was nice to meet you, Lilly. I hope you and the professor have a good summer." She gave Dani a farewell hug, and the three young women walked up the beach to the dinghy dock.
As they walked, Lilly asked, "Dani, was Mrs. Walker, like, your nanny, or something? You two seem very close."
Thinking that Lilly was unusually perceptive, Dani said, "Well, not my nanny, exactly. We probably have a stronger tie than that." She went on to explain a bit about their relationship.
"But I thought you were from France," Lilly said.
"Well, yes, I am, but Martinique and Guadeloupe are part of France. I have a lot of distant relatives in the islands, and some first cousins in the States, too. My father’s early days in business were spent on this side of the Atlantic, when I was very young."
"That explains why you don’t have an accent, then," Lilly said. "What an exciting life you must have had."
Bluewater Voodoo: Mystery and Adventure in the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 3) Page 4