Two Jakes

by Lawrence de Maria

  TWO JAKES

  Two complete novels featuring private investigator Jake Scarne

  By

  Lawrence De Maria

  Copyright © 2012 by Lawrence De Maria

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

  book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information, email ljdemaria@aol.com.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Editorial Services provided by Nancy Kreisler

  Published by St. Austin’s Press

  (305-409-0900 305-409-0900 )

  http://www.lawrencedemaria.com/

  ljdemaria@aol.com

  Book I

  SOUND OF BLOOD

  Copyright © 2011 by Lawrence De Maria

  Book II

  MADMAN’S THIRST

  Copyright © 2012 by Lawrence De Maria

  Also by Lawrence De Maria

  The Alton Rhode Mystery Series

  CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

  (2012)

  LAURA LEE

  (Summer, 2012)

  To Patti, without whose love, support and faith this book

  – and others –

  would not have been possible

  Introduction

  While both Sound of Blood and Madman’s Thirst can be enjoyed independently as “stand-alones,” I believe the reader will get the most out of the experience by taking them in order: First, Blood (hmmm, I wonder if that title is taken -- sounds familiar); then, MADMAN’S.

  There are recurring characters other than Jake Scarne (spoiler alert! Jake makes it to the second book – but don’t get your hopes up for some of the other players). Moreover, there are references in the second book to events occurring in the first, though none so crucial as to impact the narrative.

  Of course, as the author, I hope that anyone who read MADMAN’S first (presumably before this two-book edition came out) will be intrigued enough to search out BLOOD.

  As always, reader input is invaluable to an author. So, please feel free to email me at ljdemaria@aol.com and/or visit my website, http://www.lawrencedemaria.com/ to let me know what you think. Remember to reference the book, or books, in the subject line so the comments survive my spam filter (which doesn’t work all that well, anyway -- but let’s not give it a chance).

  SOUND OF BLOOD

  A Jake Scarne Thriller

  By Lawrence De Maria

  CHAPTER 1 – DANGEROUS MARINE ORGANISMS

  “Can’t we shoot him?”

  “What?”

  “Just once, let’s just shoot someone,” Keitel shouted in frustration, as well as to be heard over the growling engine. “Or strangle him.”

  The outboard was the proximate source of his anger.

  “How about a knife? I’m wonderful with a knife. Good with bombs, too. We could blow up his ridiculous car.” He leaned precariously over the stern to untangle the cast net from the cowling, where it threatened to foul a propeller. “Somebody should.” The net came loose suddenly and Keitel fell hard on his rump. His already abused coccyx throbbed with a pain reminiscent of bad landings in his paratroop days. He let out a string of curses in German, a sure sign of rage. “Why must everything be such a production?”

  The 24-foot Dusky was pitching badly in the shallows off Sunny Isles beach. The man at the wheel glanced toward the shore 100 feet away. An old woman shooing children out of the water gave him the fish eye. Jesús Garza feared few things. A Cuban abuela protecting her brood was one. They didn’t need more problems. He and Christian were behind schedule; the light was going. So while he enjoyed Keitel’s discomfort immensely, Garza gently throttled back the small sport fishing boat and gave the woman a friendly wave. Unmollified, she continued to direct a baleful glare at him. Christ, he thought, she could stop global warming with that look.

  “This whole plan is the product of a deranged mind,” Keitel groused. He was angrily refolding the dripping net. “Fucking Pirates of the Caribbean!”

  “Watch your language. The wind is blowing toward shore. The children may hear you. Might I suggest you try hitting the water? There is an awful lot of it and we already have an engine.”

  “The hell with the children,” Keitel said. But he lowered his voice.

  Garza grinned broadly as his partner struggled with his footing. Shorter than his lean, angular friend, with a welterweight’s balance and build, he had sturdy sea legs. Keitel, stubbornly ignoring the offer of a seat cushion, had taken the brunt of the bouncy ride up from the Key Biscayne marina. Cruising back and forth along Miami Beach for two hours in heavy chop before finding a patch of the slimy buggers had been no picnic either, Garza knew. They should have opted for the bigger Dusky with its twin 225 Evinrudes. He laughed. Christian could catch a bigger motor.

  “I’m glad you find all this humorous,” Keitel said.

  “You’re bunching it too tightly. Remember the video.”

  Both men had watched a homemade Internet tutorial on how to throw a cast net. The redneck fisherman in the video had a belly the size of a beluga whale but looked like Nureyev when throwing the net.

  “It’s not that easy, you idiot,” Keitel snarled. “The expert fisherman! Salt water in your veins. You try it.” He prided himself in his ability to hit whatever he aimed at. Missing the Atlantic Ocean was inconceivable.

  “Then who would handle the boat? If you were up here, we’d be in Mindel’s parking lot. No, today you are first mate, and barely passable at that.”

  “Eat a turd. Mindel’s isn’t even there anymore. He sold to a developer.”

  “Pity. I was quite fond of the pastrami and the pickle plate.”

  “And I’m fond of my spine.” Water splashed over the gunwale and Keitel used a muscled forearm to brush blonde hair out of his eyes. “Did you have to hit every damn wave on the way here?”

  ***

  If folded properly – and loosely – across one arm and thrown with a whirling bodily motion, a cast net, lined with dozens of small lead balls, opens into a circle before hitting the water. A good cast has a lot in common with a golf swing. Less effort typically produces better results. A hard toss usually leads to a clumped net. The thick gloves didn’t help. They caught in the webbing. Most of Keitel’s casts hadn’t even cleared the boat. The most recent one did manage to clear the stern but didn’t quite get past the engine.

  But he finally got the hang of it and even managed to impart some savoir faire to the endeavor. Gradually his mood improved. After one ballet-like cast, he bowed to Garza’s applause. The eighth toss was particularly fruitful and he did a count after adding the contents to the live well.

  “Ten or eleven, I think. It’s hard to be sure. Enough?”

  “For a Cape Buffalo. Dump the net and wash your gloves. Keep them on.”

  Garza waited until Keitel sat – this time on two cushions, he noted – and opened the throttle, heading south past Bal Harbour and Surfside. A few minutes later he slowed near the familiar high rise and reached for his binoculars.

  “There he is,” he said, cutting the engine just off a sandbar at 63rd Street.

  As Keitel dropped anchor he glanced toward shore, where a surfcaster wading knee-deep in the water was expertly flicking his bait just short of a sandbar. The setting sun was blocked by the condo building and this section of beach was in deep shade. The few people still stretched out on blankets would soon depart. A bronzed old man with a metal detector scoured the sand nearby, his rhythmic sweeps regular as a metronome. Garza went to the stern, opened a Styrofoam cooler and pul
led out a large white plastic bag. He leaned over the side and partially filled the bag with seawater. After testing the bag’s strength and integrity by jouncing it several times, he reached in the cooler for a long-handled kitchen strainer and a pair of gloves. Then he peered into the well.

  “What do you think? Intelligent design or evolution? I can argue either.”

  “I’m sure you could,” Keitel said. “You always do. As if it matters.”

  “Christian, I’m always amazed at your lack of intellectual curiosity. Are you not interested in the wonders of creation and the universe we inhabit? You hail from a country that produced Einstein for God’s sake.”

  “My universe is centered on my throbbing ass. And Einstein was a Jew.”

  “Do I detect anti-Semitism in that remark? I’m shocked.”

  “I’m no anti-Semite. You know I worked with the Mossad against the Syrians. That’s how I met Lev. I know I told you about him.”

  Indeed he had, Garza thought, with the usual twinge of jealousy. He was sorry he brought up the damn subject at all. Keitel never missed a chance to mention his one-time Israeli commando boyfriend. The Israeli Defense Force was very open- minded. It didn’t matter if you enjoyed screwing camels, as long as you also enjoyed killing Arabs.

  “Gave me a commendation,” Keitel continued. He saw the expression on Garza’s face. “I know. Jews giving German soldiers medals. Crazy. Hitler was a fool. Should have made peace with the Jews instead of driving them into the hands of his enemies. The Nazis would have gotten the bomb. The world would be speaking German. Like all fanatics, he had limited vision.”

  “Thank God. German is too difficult a language. But I am impressed with your reasoning. I may have to reevaluate my opinion of you.”

  “Reevaluate my dick, and impress me with your silence. Let’s do this.”

  “All right, if you insist. Hold the bag open. Wide open.”

  ***

  A rare December gale, far at sea, was roiling the shelf water. Breakers crashed over sand bars 30 yards out. By now the surfcaster could hear more than see them. But the phosphorescent foam told him they were substantial. So did the smell. The agitated water released the sea’s essence, an intoxicating mixture of brine, minerals, seaweed, marine life – and death. A wave swelled up to the fisherman’s waist. There was a splash of spray and the taste of salty spindrift on his lips. Something stuck to his cheek and his heart fluttered. A tendril came away in his hand. But it was all right; it was green. The wind-driven surf was pushing seaweed and flotsam toward land. By morning the beach would be rife with coral, sponges and sea fans, which local shore rats would sell to tourists for beer and butt money. From a distance the gunk piled at the tide line would look like a Normandy hedgerow.

  The on-shore wind also brought the danger of the beautiful but toxic Portuguese Men-of-War. The distinctive dark blue “sail” that gave the little jellyfish their name caught the breeze and sent them toward land. At certain times of the year – this was one of them – hundreds of Men-of-War would be left high and dry by the receding tide. Their tentacles remained vital even when drying out. The little “bluebottles” attracted the curious, particularly children, and the fisherman always made a point of warning them.

  He hadn’t really thought the strand on his face was a tentacle but the stab of fear was instinctive. Weeks earlier, also while wading, his right calf had exploded in pain, as if slashed with a hot razor. The agony shot to his groin; he thought he was in real trouble. After scraping the four-inch tentacle off his leg with sand and seawater, he limped back to his apartment and washed the affected area with vinegar, one of several home remedies purported to neutralize jellyfish venom. (Another is urine, but pissing on demand was never one of his strong suits.) The throbbing remained intense and he finally went to Flagler General.

  “The groin pain just radiated up a nerve,” the emergency room doctor told him after giving him a shot. “Allergic reactions to jellyfish are rare. Your throat would swell and you’d have trouble breathing. The real danger is cardiac arrest caused by shock when a huge dose of toxin hits near the heart or head. But one bluebottle isn’t going to do it. A box jellyfish, maybe, but this isn’t Australia. Of course, now that you’ve been sensitized, you’re next reaction might be different.”

  With that warning in mind, before fishing he looked to see if the aptly named blue “Dangerous Marine Organisms” flags were flying from the rescue shacks and kept a cell phone handy in his bucket. This wasn’t South Beach; after dark he would be alone. Half the condos were vacant, owned by now-desperate speculators. Until the sun set, his main company had been the ubiquitous sandpipers pecking like typists on the keyboard of the shore and brown pelicans skimming the waves. There seemed to be more pelicans than usual. The fisherman wondered if some of them were refugees from the oil spill in the Gulf that had somehow traversed the Florida peninsula, or had been cleaned in the Panhandle and relocated. Then again, the mind saw what it wanted to see. Everyone in the country had pelicans on the brain. But he would check it out. Could be a great story.

  As it darkened, all the birds flew off to wherever birds go at night. The only humans around were a couple of diehard bathers and an old man with a metal detector who, as he passed the fisherman, gave him a “me neither” shrug. There were also two men on a fishing boat just past the bars. Curious. Most small craft anchored further out, in calmer water. A man at the wheel swept the beachfront with binoculars, probably looking at a few skimpily clad women on the pool decks of nearby hotels.

  ***

  The prospector and bathers were gone and the surfcaster could no longer see the boat. He didn’t mind. New-found anonymity and Florida’s milder climate provided a solitude he’d craved in New York. He religiously broke up his work week by fishing this stretch of beach every Wednesday. He’d even delayed his research trip to Antigua by a day so as not to break his routine.

  A routine that had not gone unnoticed.

  ***

  What we do with a drunken sailor?

  What we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning?

  “Jesus, Jesús, not only can’t you sing,” an exasperated Keitel said as he lifted the plastic bag from the live well, “but the words are wrong.”

  Garza was undeterred by the criticism of his sea chantey.

  “Cuban version. And look who’s the music expert,” he said. “The only song you know is Deutschland über alles.”

  Keitel laughed and gave the bag a few hard shakes to test its integrity.

  “It will hold. Are you sure it’s dark enough?”

  “Yes. You can see nothing from the buildings. Same moon as last night.”

  “I’ll do it if you want,” Keitel said quietly. “I’m the better swimmer.”

  Garza was touched. Christian was always full of surprises.

  “Your heart isn’t in it. And as you ungraciously reminded me, this is my lunatic idea. But I appreciate the gesture.”

  Slipping over the side, Garza found that he could almost stand. Keitel reached over the gunwale and handed him the tightly-tied plastic bag, holding it gingerly by its drawstring, which he wrapped around his partner’s wrist.

  “Buena suerte,” Keitel said.

  Garza smiled. The online language classes were obviously working.

  “Danke.”

  He started side-stroking toward shore at a slight angle. As he disappeared from sight, Keitel could hear him singing happily.

  Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum...

  ***

  The turbulent surf was a smorgasbord of organic matter and small crustaceans. That attracted baitfish, pilchards and silversides, whose sole purpose was to occupy low rungs in the food chain, where they provided a moveable feast for larger predators: small sharks, bluefish, barracuda, jacks and pompano.

  There was too much seaweed to use lures so the fisherman baited his hook with a chunk of herring, to which he attached a strip of squid. Both had been purchased,
rather guiltily, at a nearby Publix; he hadn’t had time to go to the marina. Well, he mused, one man’s sushi was another man’s bait. He felt a sharp jab on his ankle. Reaching down he brought up a large, faded conch shell. He was tempted to put it to his ear, but recalled a recent run-in with a hermit crab that had taken up residence in another conch. The cheeky little devil nipped his lobe in annoyance. It wasn’t even the crab’s own shell! He’d tell Emma the story when she visited. She’d get a kick out of it. He smiled as the thought of her brought back a memory from their shared childhood, another beach, another shell – the first time he’d crossed swords with his uncle. But certainly not the last. Just wait until the old reprobate gets a load of what …

  The rod tip jerked and the reel’s drag started clicking wildly. The fisherman flipped the nondescript conch away (there were many more colorful specimens in his collection) and set the hook, using a wave to surf the seaweed-covered fish the final few feet. A bluefish flopped helplessly in the sand. It was small, maybe three pounds, with a streamlined body built for speed and a piranha-like head. The analogy was apt. Feeding blues easily topped the ferocity of the much smaller Amazon denizens and had even been known to bite bathers in their blood lust. The unfortunate bluefish suffocating on the beach was certainly not alone. Blues travel in schools of like-sized fish. If it was one of the smaller blues in its pod, he might get a five or six pounder! He dumped the flopping fish in the ice-filled bag inside his bucket, in his excitement receiving several nasty finger cuts from its razor sharp teeth. He rebaited quickly. The type of bait at this point was academic. Blues chomp anything. He could have saved money and bought a package of hot dogs.

  The next cast into a trough only 20 feet from shore where a platoon of blues from a larger school swirled under the seaweed. Eventually they would head to deep water to rejoin the main pod, guided by senses that could detect a single drop of blood in a cubic acre of water. A savage hit! This blue ripped off line. He tightened the drag and worked the frantic fish back. Eventually it tired. A beauty, at least five pounds. He shoved the blue into his bag, where it thrashed violently against its deceased cousin. He would keep both. Blues this size tasted like real fish, not the sauced-up slabs of Chilean sea bass or tilapia passed off as haute cuisine in the tourist traps on Lincoln Road. And what the hell was monkfish? He bent down to cut more bait.