Art and I followed the manager to the rear conference room on the left side, the guard following behind us. In the conference room, Audrey closed the blinds and door, while the guard waited just outside.
“Would either of you gentlemen care for a cup of tea?” Audrey asked. “Coffee, perhaps?”
“Coffee would be great,” I replied.
She left the room, and Mister Lachance waved a hand to the table in invitation. “Please, have a seat. I will need to see your passport and another form of identification, Mister McDermitt.”
Taking my passport from my back pants pocket, I handed it to the man, then fished out my wallet and gave him my driver’s license. “Will this take very long, Mister Lachance?” I asked.
“Not at all, sir,” he replied, looking at my passport and license. He looked up at a camera in the corner and nodded, saying, “Identification visually confirmed.” Placing both of them facedown on a scanner, Lachance pressed a button on the machine and it began to make a soft whirring sound.
“Audrey said that the lock on your briefcase is disabled?” he asked.
“Not really disabled,” I replied. “I just forgot the combination.”
The door opened and the guard held it to allow Audrey to push a small coffee cart into the room. “Audrey will put your funds in a lockable box that will fit inside your briefcase, Mister McDermitt. Please make yourselves comfortable until she returns.”
Lachance returned my credentials, then he and Audrey left, taking my briefcase with them, leaving Art and me alone in the conference room. I poured a couple of mugs and we sat down to wait.
“He kinda handled your briefcase like he was holding a day-old dead fish,” Art said.
“Form follows function. It gets the job done for me.”
Our wait wasn’t nearly as long as I’d thought it was going to be. I’d just poured us both a fresh mug of coffee when Audrey opened the door. This time, she held it as the guard pushed another cart into the room with my briefcase riding on it.
“I just need you to verify that the funds are correct, Mister McDermitt,” Audrey said with an inviting smile. She opened the briefcase and handed me a key on a sturdy-looking keyring.
The strongbox inside the briefcase nearly filled it. I lifted it out and, turning it around, I used the key to unlock and open it. Audrey removed a file from the box, revealing the neatly stacked bundles of hundred-dollar bills. I picked one up and fanned it, visually counting the stacks. There were forty-nine bundles, totaling $490,000.
“All there,” I said, taking the file from Audrey and signing the receipt inside it. She tore off the second copy and handed it to me, which I placed in the box, then closed and locked it.
“Is there anything else that UBS can do for you today, sir?”
“Thanks, Audrey,” I said with a smile, closing the briefcase and picking it up. “I think we’re all set.”
She opened the door with what I took as a seductive smile. The guard stood just outside. “If there’s nothing else I can do for you, Jefferson will escort you to your car.”
I’m kind of a dolt, where it comes to women. So I tend to err on the side of caution and assume I’m wrong when I think a woman might be coming onto me. But even a dolt carrying half a million dollars might be attractive to some women.
“Thanks, Audrey,” I said. “You’ve been very courteous.”
“Well,” she said, smiling brightly. “If you’re ever back in Nassau.”
Ten minutes later, the cab driver dropped us off at the marina and we were underway, less than forty minutes after arriving in Nassau.
It was nearly noon as we approached the southern tip of Cat Island once again. Taking my satellite phone out, I called Chyrel’s number. She answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Jesse. We’re almost finished here. Maybe another hour.”
“Are you at a point where you can connect me with this Claude Whyte?”
“Sure, I don’t need Henry’s computer to do that,” Chyrel replied. “He’s such a sweet old man, by the way.”
“When we do this, Whyte will call Cross on my sat phone. Can you make it look like the call’s coming from Cat Island?”
“Child’s play,” Chyrel replied.
A moment later, I heard a click and then a ringtone. “Want me to disconnect?” Chyrel asked over the ringing.
“No, record it if you can.”
A man with a Jamaican accent answered the phone. “Who dis?”
“Name’s McDermitt,” I replied. “Captain of Gaspar’s Revenge.” There was silence for a second and I thought he’d hung up. “Still there, Claude?”
“Wha yuh want? An how yuh know my bumbaclot name and numbuh, white boi?”
“You know who I am?” I asked in a cordial manner.
“I and I know who yuh ah. I evah see you ’gain, I gwon cut out yuh haht, mon.”
Ignoring his threats, I continued in a cordial tone. “I want to meet with you, Claude. I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
Most of what he said next, I was unable to decipher, as his voice went off the scale in pitch. I did pick up a few curse words, though. Finally, he asked, “Wha yuh wanna see I for, white boi?”
“I know all about the kidnapping, the plan to murder the two women, and who paid you to do it.”
There was silence again for a moment. “So, yuh tink yuh know it all?”
“I also know you can’t contact the guy who hired you and you’re out the rest of the money for the job.” That got his attention.
“Who duh blood clot are yuh?”
“Meet me at Hawk’s Nest Marina in half an hour. There’ll be three of us on the restaurant deck. Come with more than four men and the deal I’m about to make you is off. Play ball and I can make it so your week isn’t a total loss. To the tune of a hundred thousand dollars American.”
“An jest wha do I and I gotta do for dat?” Pat was right. They were easy to buy. Now it was just a matter of negotiating a price for the service.
“A hundred grand and all you have to do is make a phone call.”
“Call who, mon?”
“I give you the money and you call Nick Cross.”
“I and I been callin’ him all day, always a engaged signa’.”
“I’m blocking all calls from the islands to D.C. and Beaufort.”
He paused for a moment, but I could hear his heavy breathing after his enraged tirade. “Wha yuh want I tell dis mon?”
“Tell him we failed in getting the women back and we’re dead. Then tell him the price is double what you agreed on for trying to double-cross you. Then you’ll tell him he has to meet you in person, two days from now. In Beaufort. Think you can handle that?”
Slowly bringing the Revenge down off plane, I idled into the channel where we’d blown up a boat the day before. Andrew was standing at the forward rail of the bridge, in front of the forward bench seat, and Tony and Art were on either side of the foredeck, windbreakers hiding the machine pistols they carried. Though the lightweight jackets might look conspicuous in June in the tropics, we’d agreed that it was less so than carrying weapons in the open.
“An yuh gwon be heah in half a hour?” Claude asked.
“I’m here now,” I replied, shifting to neutral. His question told me that he didn’t have anyone watching the marina approach.
“Yuh a fool, McDermitt. Whut stop I and I from jes coming dere an taking yuh money?”
“One, you know our firepower and you’ll sure as shit die trying something that stupid. And two, the hundred grand is just a down payment.”
“An di rest of di payment?”
This was almost too easy. “Another hundred thousand after you make the call. If you make it believable.”
I heard nothing for a moment. Andrew went down and watched from the starboard-side deck as Tony and Art tied us up at the dock.
“Tree hunder,” Claude said.
“Deal. Half when we meet as a good faith deposit and the othe
r half if you make him believe you. Then your part in this is done and you can bury your dead.”
“Left dem mons to di shahks,” Claude said heartlessly. “I be dere in twenny minutes, mon.”
The line went dead. Climbing quickly down to the cockpit, I told Andrew to keep a sharp eye out and went into the cockpit. Opening the briefcase on the couch, I took out thirty of the bundles of hundreds and split them between two empty reel cases. I find fly rod cases and reel cases very unnoticeable in most of the places I travel.
Back on deck, Andrew and I stepped up onto the dock with Tony and Art. “Tony, you go ahead of us. Find a spot on the corner of the deck with a good view. We’ll be along in five minutes and take a table in the center.”
“Roger that,” Tony said, then turned and walked casually toward the restaurant, his MP5K hanging from a sling under his arm completely hidden by the oversized Rusty Anchor Bar and Grill zip-up windbreaker he was wearing.
With Andrew and Art, I walked around toward the front of the Marina, entering the restaurant from inside the main clubhouse. A young island woman stood at a podium and smiled brightly as we approached.
“Yuh heah fa lunch, Cap’n?”
“Yeah,” I replied with as disarming a smile as I could muster. “We’ll need a big table. We’re meeting friends.”
“How many in yuh pahtee?”
“Seven,” I replied.
The young woman picked up the appropriate number of menus and said, “Dis way, Cap’n. It not ver busy right now. Yuh want a table inside, or outside wit a view of di marina?”
“We’ve been on the water for two days,” I replied. “How about a table in the middle of the deck outside?”
She led the way out to the deck, weaving between the many tables toward a large one in the center. Tony sat at a table by the rail, with his back to the wall of what I guessed to be the kitchen area. There were only three other people on the deck, obvious tourists seated together near the steps down to the dock area.
Once we were seated, a waiter came over and took our drink orders, leaving a tray of glasses and two large pitchers of water. Before he left, I told him to just bring fish sandwiches and chips for the three of us and he hurried off.
“We’re ready to record,” I heard Deuce say over the tiny earwig receiver I was wearing. “Just say the word and we’ll start.”
Each of us had one, but without the bone mics attached. Andrew had a single powerful mic, disguised as a fishing lure and clipped to an old Gaspar’s Revenge Charter Service hat. It was connected wirelessly to my laptop on the boat, beaming a signal to a satellite directly above us.
Claude was early, and he didn’t look very happy. “You can start now, Deuce,” I said to Andrew.
As Claude approached with his three men, I could tell that they were all carrying handguns tucked into their pants under their shirts. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tony reach up and scratch his cheek with two fingers, while looking out over the marina entrance.
“Which one a yuh is McDermitt?” Claude asked as he approached. His three men spread out and stopped short behind him.
Slowly, I looked up from the menu I was pretending to read. “I told you four men, Claude. And here you show up with you and five others. Is that any way to start a successful business relationship?”
He started to say something, but Andrew slid his chair back suddenly, causing all four Jamaicans to reach for their shirtfronts. They froze as Andrew’s windbreaker discreetly fell open, revealing his hand on the grip of the ugly-looking machine pistol under it. These guys were amateurs. It’s a wonder Pat didn’t take them all out herself.
“Tell one of your men to leave now and to take one of the lookouts with him. He can tell the other lookout to join us. Do it now, or the deal’s off and my man here might decide to just open you up from crotch to Adam’s apple, just for the hell of it.”
Andrew’s MP5K wasn’t up, but it was right there in plain view of all four men and pointed loosely at Claude’s feet. The gang leader must have remembered the devastating firepower from the previous day. He slowly turned and nodded to the man on his right, who then turned and left the deck.
“Sit down,” I said. “You look like someone trying to sell dope or pick a fight.” I picked up one of the reel cases and slid it partway across the table, along with my sat phone.
Another of Claude’s men approached the table, looking all around the deck area. The waitress serving Tony had sat down next to him and they were both laughing about something. Of all of Deuce’s team, Tony’s probably the best at improvising and making himself look like something he’s not. Claude’s man’s eyes passed right over Tony and looked out over the boats in the marina, discounting Tony and the group on the other side of the steps from him as no danger.
With my foot, I shoved a chair out across the table from me. “Sit or we walk.”
Reluctantly, Claude sat down, his eyes never leaving mine. I expected him to have the dreadlocks most of his type did. His men all wore them in various lengths. Cautiously, they too sat down around the table. Claude’s hair was cropped short and he sported a thin mustache, with a soul patch below his lower lip. His eyes were a very light shade of brown and his skin the color of cinnamon, indicating mixed ancestry.
“Open the box,” I told him.
With his left hand, Claude slowly slid the box closer and opened the lid. Reaching in, he thumbed the bundles, counting them. When he looked up, there was a grin on his face.
“All I and I do is make dis phone call? Blood clot, mon, I go up dere and kill dis man for dat much.”
“I don’t want him dead,” I said. “Not yet, anyway. You have to make it believable, though. He has to think me and my men are dead, you’re pissed, and you still have the women and will turn them over to the authorities if he doesn’t pay up double. It has to be in person, just him and you. And it has to be in Beaufort. Tell him Waterfront Park at noon in two days. His private cell number is in the phone’s memory—just hit redial.”
“Tot you say I only ha to make dis call, mon. Now you want I go all di way to bumbaclot ’Merica.”
“You won’t have to go,” I said. “Unless he knows what you look like.”
“Neva met di mon.”
“Good, you just tell him what I told you to say. Make it believable and you’re three hundred grand richer.”
“Lemme see di rest of di money.”
I reached down to the deck, not taking my eyes off his, and picked up the second reel case. I opened the lid and tilted it toward Claude so he could see inside.
“Called di mon yestuhday and left a message. He already know you got di womens.”
“No,” I said quietly. “I had the message erased from his voice mail before he was able to retrieve it. He’s been trying to call you all day, but I’ve had that blocked as well.”
Slowly, Claude reached for my sat phone and opened it. “Who di blood clot are yuh, Jesse McDermitt?”
“So, you’ve known Jesse since he was little?” Chyrel asked Henry as she sat cross-legged on the floor, connecting cables to a new computer.
“Ha! Way before that, young lady.”
“Like when he was a baby?”
“His grandpa and I were pretty tight after the war, and we’d known each other since school. I knew Jesse’s dad when he was little and remember how proud he was when he told everyone that they were expecting. My wife and I had been having Sunday dinners with them for years, like one big family.”
“What was he like as a kid?” Chyrel asked, rising to fish a bundled cable from her bag. “Was he always so serious?”
Henry thought back, his mind drifting more than four decades into the past. Chyrel watched as a cloud of pain seemed to fall over the old man’s face for just a moment.
“No,” Henry said. “No, Jesse was like most kids when he was little, I guess. My wife and I never had any. Jesse’s been shaped by the events in his life. He lost both his parents at an early age. Did you know that?”
/>
Chyrel slowly sat down in a chair. “Yeah, I did. How did they die?”
Henry’s face turned down a moment, the look of pain returning to his features.
“I’m sorry,” Chyrel said. “I shouldn’t ask.”
“No, it’s alright. He’d tell you himself if you asked him.” Slowly, Henry gathered his thoughts and sighed. “We were all Marines. Frank and I, that’s Jesse’s grandpa, we served in the South Pacific together, fought the Japs on Iwo. You know where that is?”
Chyrel nodded and Henry continued. “Jesse’s daddy followed in Frank’s footsteps. He was a Marine in Vietnam. It was at one of our regular Sunday dinners, back in the winter of sixty-eight. A blue sedan pulled into Frank’s driveway and two Marines got out. Me and Frank both knew what they’d come for, and Frank immediately called his pastor. He came over a few minutes later. We were all devastated to learn that Bo had been killed in action in Vietnam. Bo is what we called Frank’s boy. Helen, that was Bo’s young wife, she completely lost it. Those two kids were so much in love and had been best friends since grade school. She took her own life a few days later and Jesse went to live with Frank and Norma. From that Sunday on, the boy was serious as a heart attack most times. He studied hard in school, got real good grades, excelled in sports, and learned all he could about good and evil and right and wrong from Frank and Norma. Me too, I guess. We were that tight.”
“Nineteen sixty-eight?” Chyrel asked. “So Jesse was only eight?”
Henry nodded. “Yep, that boy went straight from eight to eighteen that week. There were times when he’d unwind and be a kid. Mostly it was when we’d go out on one of Frank’s boats. But, even then, there was always a serious depth to his eyes and a hard set to his jaw. Under the conditions, I think he developed into a pretty well-adjusted young man. He was offered several academic college scholarships, full-ride scholarships, too. You won’t find many smarter men than Jesse.” Henry chuckled a little. “Nor many as boneheaded. He wound up marching to the same drum his daddy and pappy did. You known him long?”
“Just a couple of years. I met him just after his wife died.”
Fallen Angel: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 9) Page 6