Neal had found Leighton Stewart’s address in the George Town phone book; he just hoped the bank manager would be home. They pulled up in front of an adorable little bungalow, freshly painted white with aquamarine trim and with a cute walkway lined with giant conch shells.
They got out of the car, and Neal watched Piet stare at Seo-yun’s ass. Of course her ass was right in his sight line, but it seemed to Neal that Piet was unnaturally fixated on it. He wished someone would look at his ass like that.
He followed Piet and Seo-yun up the crushed stone path toward the front door. All of a sudden Piet stopped and turned to them. “Let’s get out of here.”
Neal was confused. “Why? We just got here.”
Piet sniffed the air. “You can’t smell that?”
Neal caught a whiff of something sweet and trashy, like ice cream and rotting produce.
Seo-yun looked at Piet. “It smells like garbage.”
Piet shook his head. “If you don’t want the police involved in this case, we walk away right now.”
Neal started to argue, but Piet cut him off.
“That’s the smell of a corpse. We need to go.”
They got back in the car as quickly as they could without looking suspicious. Neal didn’t know what to think. It did smell funky but … a corpse? That seemed like a stretch. And if it was a corpse, did that mean LeBlanc had killed his accomplice? Or maybe it was LeBlanc’s body. Neal heard Piet on his cell phone talking to someone in the police force. Apparently Piet had friends there who would treat the information as an anonymous tip.
Neal and Seo-yun exchanged a look, but Neal wasn’t sure what the look was. Did she believe there was a corpse in the house? Or did she think Piet was bullshitting? But why would he be? It annoyed Neal. What had started out as a simple and logical search of a small island had suddenly become complicated.
He decided to take charge. “We should look at car and truck sales, new registrations, boat sales.”
“That sounds like a good place to start,” Seo-yun agreed.
Piet raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think he’s buying some kind of transport?”
Seo-yun said, “He might need to get around the island. Move some stuff.”
Piet nodded. “Okay, but he came here for a reason, right?”
“We think he came to see Leighton Stewart.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we’re hoping to find out.”
“Seems vague.” Piet sucked his teeth, apparently thinking about something, and then turned to Neal. “Were you military?”
“I never served.”
“Thought you might’ve been air force, Cyber Command or something.”
“That sounds cool, but no.”
“Police? You work in law enforcement?”
Neal shook his head. “Nope. And I’m not a lawyer or a licensed private investigator, if that’s where you’re going next.”
“Diplomatic security?”
“No.” Neal had never really had his credentials questioned before. It was irritating.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Piet said apologetically.
“I’m not upset.”
Seo-yun interjected. “I’m sure you’re good at your job, but I can assure you that Neal is also very good at his job.”
Piet sucked on his teeth again and nodded. “You’re the boss. I’ll go to the Department of Vehicle and Drivers’ Licensing and see if there are any new transactions. If he bought something, new or used, they’ll have a record of it.”
Seo-yun looked at Piet. “I’ll come with you.”
Neal raised an eyebrow at Seo-yun, then shrugged and said, “I guess I’ll go talk to some boat dealers.”
Grover had told Piet to wait for him at the police station, so Piet sat on a bench and watched Seo-yun stroll down the hallway. She walked past the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service crest: an English lion above three green stars. Underneath the crest was the official police motto: “We Care, We Listen, and We Act.” A claim that Piet could arguably debunk based on past experiences working with the RCIPS. As far as he could tell they sometimes cared, never listened, and did whatever the hell they felt like doing. Grover was the exception to that. He could be discreet. Especially if there was some angle he could work later to his benefit.
Piet watched as Seo-yun did a pirouette and walked back toward him. She was on the phone. Apparently she had a lot going on, because her phone rang every fifteen minutes, sometimes more. And that’s not counting the text messages. She paced back and forth, her head flopped to one side, as if the conversation she was having was the most boring thing in the world.
He could feel the sexual magnetism between himself and Seo-yun. Something about the way she ate the french fry off his plate was a signal. You didn’t have to be a biologist to see that.
She spun on her toes, turned, and walked away from him. He thought, Her ass is incredible. Unlike the twitch and sling of other asses, hers spoke to him like no other ass he’d ever communicated with. He could hear Seo-yun’s ass talking to him in his head:
I want to feel the sun on my skin. I want the wind to whip between my cheeks and cool my hot pussy. I want you …
She had a telepathic ass.
Piet focused his mind’s eye and sent her ass a mental message. He would take her outside. He would do whatever she wanted. He could feel his penis stiffening in his pants.
“You look like you’re trying to take a shit.”
Piet looked up and saw Grover standing in front of him. He stood up. The front of his pants tenting awkwardly. Piet pulled his guayabera down to cover it. “Just thinking.”
Grover laughed. “You want my advice, don’t think so hard.”
Piet changed the subject. “What did you find?”
“You’re going to have to tell me about this case you’re working on.” Grover flipped his iPhone around and showed Piet a photo he’d snapped. “This ain’t no selfie.”
Piet put his fingers on the glass and zoomed in. The photo revealed a partly decomposing man with a giant conch shell sticking out of his face.
“What the fuck?”
Seo-yun came up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the photo. He was surprised that she didn’t react. She just said, “That’s not him.” And then she went back to her call.
“Who is it?”
Grover cleared his throat. “Leighton Stewart. In his car. Parked in his driveway.”
Piet nodded. “So … suicide.”
Grover grunted. “Don’t get cute with me. I want to know who you’re looking for because I think he might know something about this.”
“We were looking for him. Leighton Stewart.”
“Then I guess I want to know why you’re looking for him.”
Piet spoke quietly. “They haven’t told me. We’re also looking for an American male. Thirtyish. Six feet tall. Average build, average weight.”
Grover grimaced. “I got three thousand of those coming off a cruise line this afternoon.”
“Apparently he needs a truck or a boat.” Piet cleared his throat. “That’s really all I know.”
Grover did not look happy. “Maybe I’ll take her in for questioning.”
Piet shook his head. “They’ll just hire a bunch of lawyers. You won’t get anything.”
“Can you at least give me a name?”
Piet saw Seo-yun hang up and put her phone in her purse. He moved close to Grover. “Bryan LeBlanc.”
“I’ll run the name and have my people check the car rentals and immigration, see if anything comes up. He had to enter the country at some point.”
“Thanks.”
“You can thank me when you come to the house for some grouper.” With that, Grover grunted a good-bye and walked off down the hall.
Seo-yun walked toward Piet. He heard her ass speak again, a soft whisper inside his head: Let’s get it on.
As he cruised down the Esterley Tibbetts Highway, Neal began to question his instincts.
He’d already been to the Barcadere Marina, the George Town Yacht Club, and the Cayman Islands Sailing Club. He’d spent half the afternoon driving around and gotten nowhere. The George Town Yacht Club turned out to be a restaurant. Nobody knew anything about a boat bought or sold in the past few weeks. Not unless you counted a Jet Ski.
Neal had flashed a photograph of LeBlanc—the picture from his corporate ID card—but he just got shrugs and blank expressions. Everyone had seen someone who looked like that. The island was crawling with American tourists, and LeBlanc was just another good-looking Caucasian with money.
It was frustrating. How could someone just vanish? In a typical case he would have seized the assets by now and been done with it. The Caymans, the bank transactions, the weekend sailing lessons—it was too much of a coincidence not to be connected, and yet it wasn’t adding up. The only promising news was a phone call from Piet to tell him that the smell at Leighton Stewart’s bungalow was, in fact, Leighton Stewart’s dead body. But while that was a clue, it didn’t reassure him. Murder didn’t fit with what he knew about LeBlanc. It didn’t make sense. But then maybe the whole thing had gone sour and they’d be finding LeBlanc’s body next.
Or he could be completely wrong. He didn’t know. He didn’t feel sure of anything.
Maybe the breakup with Bart had thrown his intuition off. He spent a good portion of every day brooding about their relationship and what he could’ve done or should’ve done or would’ve done if he’d just known how tenuous everything was. He could have rooted for the Mets. Would that have killed him? Bart thought tattoos were superhot. Why didn’t he get one? Neal didn’t have anything against tattoos. Bart had a few and was especially proud of his tattoo of Mr. Met as drawn in the style of Tom of Finland. It was, Neal had to admit, unlike any tattoo he’d ever seen before, the Mets’ mascot, with his baseball for a head and his goofy grin, suddenly shirtless, revealing a muscular body, and sporting a massive erection practically leaping out of his baseball chaps. Sexualizing sports team mascots was original. And if you were going to put something permanent on your body, you probably wanted something original. What sports team mascot would Neal put on his biceps? You can’t sexualize a Seahawk. He’d bought the couch for Bart, it was true, but maybe a couch just wasn’t enough to base a long-term relationship on.
Neal pulled into the Harbor House Marina and parked, but he didn’t get out of the car. Instead he let the seat fall back as far as it could and lay there, thinking. He realized his heart wasn’t in it—he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He didn’t want to canvass the employees and ask roundabout questions before showing the grainy photo of LeBlanc. He didn’t want to see them shrug and hear them mutter apologies that they couldn’t help him. It was all too dispiriting.
He got out of the car and took a stroll through the marina, past fishing boats and power cruisers. A few boats were pulling into slips, returning home with their cargo of sportfishermen and -women standing on the deck drinking beer and holding up bloody mahimahi. They were sunburnt and smiling, taking selfies with the dead animals. Neal didn’t get it, but maybe that’s what people did on vacation: they killed things and took pictures.
Not that he would know. He hadn’t had a vacation in years. Why hadn’t he taken Bart to Hawaii or the Bahamas or even Fire Island? Stuck his feet in the sand, drunk rum until he fell asleep, woken up, and killed something. Taken some pictures; made some memories.
Neal was ready to go back to the hotel and see how many mojitos he could drink when he came to a few sailboats. Some were tied in their berths and unoccupied. They were big enough to live on, like nautical RVs.
Nothing was happening on any of the boats except the sleek boat at the end. Workmen were busy restringing lines and hauling supplies aboard, seemingly prepping the boat for something, all of this activity overseen by a young woman in a pastel polo shirt.
Neal was good at finding people and recovering assets because he was logical and methodical. He didn’t believe in hunches or Ouija boards or letting the universe guide him. But even so, there was usually a moment when the logic and the method lined up and he knew he was close to the truth. He remembered an old quote from a Sherlock Holmes mystery, where the coke-addled detective said: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Seeing the boat, Neal felt something, and it wasn’t the Caribbean burger and it wasn’t his heartbreak. Neal would’ve bet his expensive couch that this was LeBlanc’s boat.
Neal watched, trying to look casual. He waited until the woman stepped off the boat, and then he approached her. “Beautiful boat.”
She nodded. “Yeah. She’s a special one.”
“Are you getting ready to put it on the market?”
She smiled at him. “Just sold it. But if you’re looking, I can take your information.”
Neal smiled back. “Do you have a card?”
She pulled a business card out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Just let me know what you’re in the market for.”
He watched her walk away and then pulled out his cell phone.
Seo-yun crouched in the backseat of the car on all fours. Her skirt had been lifted up against her back and her panties were looped around her left ankle. Piet was behind her, his pants around his ankles, his hands gripping her hips, his pelvis slamming away at her.
She’d never had sex outdoors before. But the sexual tension in the car had been too much to bear, so she’d suggested they just pull over. He’d found a kind of jungled-up cul-de-sac, so they kicked off their shoes and climbed into the backseat.
They left the car doors open so she could feel the sunlight on her face, the tropical air from the ocean caressing her skin. It was all so pleasant, like a really lovely picnic. The simple things. That’s what she’d been missing. She slipped her hand under her bra and pinched her nipple. It made her come.
Of course she’d known they would end up somewhere like this. She saw how he looked at her in the police station. It was like a flashing neon sign that blinked the words FUCK ME in hot pink. She thought they might wait until night, maybe have a few drinks, end up in one of their hotel rooms; but when her fiancé called her for the fourth time in a half hour, well, she just turned to Piet and said let’s get it on. Not that she said those words exactly. She was more direct. Now he was back there, groaning and saying something to her ass, having a conversation with it. Men, she decided, were strange.
Piet thrust hard, his cock going deep inside her, and she let out a little moan. It did feel good, she could admit that, and getting fucked alfresco was fantastic. It really was a shame she hadn’t tried it sooner. Maybe that’s why people moved out to the suburbs. It’s easier to fuck outside if you have a backyard.
She heard her phone ringing inside her purse and reached into the front seat for it. Piet slowed his motion. “What’re you doing?”
Seo-yun looked at the caller ID and said, “It’s Neal.” She answered the phone. “Hey, Neal.” Piet had stopped thrusting. She turned her head and made a rolling motion with her fingers. “Keep going.”
Piet began thrusting again, and she pushed the button for speaker and heard Neal ask, “What’s happening?”
“We’re just finishing up.”
“Finishing up what?”
She looked back at Piet’s face. His jaw was slack and his eyes were rolling up in his head. “He’s coming.”
Piet let out a low, guttural moan. She felt his cock spasm inside her and his body shudder.
“What?”
Seo-yun turned back to the phone. “I already came. So, you know, he’s doing his thing.”
She felt Piet’s cock go soft and he stepped back, out of the car, and began pulling up his pants. Neal wasn’t saying anything on the other end of the phone, so Seo-yun broke the silence.
“You’d like him. He’s got a big dick.”
Pearson Kilpatrick sat on a low wall and watched the American talk on his mobile. It was a nice scene: the marina
in the foreground, the boats bobbing on dark water, and then the soft blue-green of the sea beyond, the kind of aquamarine that had an inner glow; you could only get that color by using oils. Acrylics just didn’t let the light in.
The American seemed annoyed. By what, Pearson had no idea, but he’d been following him ever since he and the midget and the Asian woman left Leighton’s house in a hurry. Pearson knew that the American and his friends were looking for the same thing he was looking for, the thing that he and Leighton had come close to stealing.
Leighton was his cousin. They’d grown up together. Gone to school. Got into mischief. All the things that boys do. Their parents worked at hotels and resorts on the island, which meant that they had gotten a taste of what it would be like to be rich like the tourists. Pearson wasn’t impressed. Just because you acted better than everyone didn’t mean you were. But Leighton wanted to be wealthy like the bankers and the celebrities who stayed at the resorts and bought mansions on the island, people like Taylor Swift, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, and billionaire Ken Dart. Leighton went to college, studied hard, and when he learned that almost $21 trillion in offshore funds was processed through Cayman banks, well, he studied harder. Got his foot in the door at a bank and worked his way up.
Pearson took a more relaxed, almost Rastafarian view of day-to-day living. Of course that changed, and the dreads came off, when he started taking his art seriously. But just because he was committed to being an artist didn’t mean there was a demand for his work in George Town. The three or four galleries on the island specialized in art for tourists. Paintings of sea turtles and sandy beaches were fine, but they were not the kind of art he wanted to paint.
When Leighton showed up at his studio with the plan, it seemed simple and straightforward. Leighton pulled a couple of cold Mango Tango beers out of a paper bag and cracked them open. He handed one to Pearson and then sat at the table and laid it out.
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