Bluewater Ganja: The Ninth Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series (Bluewater Thrillers Book 9)

by Charles Dougherty

He held her small, callused hand for a beat too long, looking into her eyes until she blinked and withdrew her hand. "You must be Dani."

  "Yes," she said, "and this is Liz Chirac." She inclined her head in Liz's direction.

  He barely glanced at Liz, fixing his eyes on Dani again. "Your picture in the brochure's attractive, but it doesn't do justice to your eyes. They're a blue like I've never seen before, like the ocean."

  Out of the corner of her eye, Dani saw Liz and Cynthia exchange glances. Cynthia rolled her eyes and Liz smirked.

  "You must be tired, Mr. Savage," Liz said. "Let's get you settled on Vengeance with something cold to drink in your hand while I cook your 'welcome aboard' dinner. We waited for you, instead of having it last night."

  "Great. Thanks," he said, still looking at Dani and grinning. "Oh, and please call me Ed. I left Mr. Savage back in the office."

  Liz and Cynthia led the way to the dinghy dock, Dani and Ed trailing behind them.

  "Cynthia told me you're a lawyer," Dani said, sneaking a look at Ed's chiseled profile as they picked their way across the sandy lot between the ferry dock and the dinghy dock. "What sort of law do you practice?"

  "I'm a trial lawyer — civil litigation. Mostly, I represent plaintiffs in product liability cases."

  "I see. And your office is in Atlanta, I believe?"

  "That's right."

  "Are you in a big firm?"

  "No. I don't like partners."

  "No wonder your vacation got delayed, then. It must be hard to get away if you're solo."

  "Well, I do have a bunch of lawyers working for me. I just like to call all the shots."

  "I can understand that. I was never any good at being a 'team player,' as they called it. That's how I ended up doing this."

  "What did you do before?" Ed asked.

  "My mother's family's in the investment banking business. I spent a couple of years not fitting in and finally decided to follow my passion."

  "Always a good choice. How did you find a passion for the sea?"

  "My father. He's always been a yachtsman."

  "Is he in the investment banking business, too?"

  "No. He's in international trade, but he has several big yachts in charter in the Med. It's a sideline for him. He passed on his love of sailing to me."

  "Do your parents live in New York? I think of New York when I hear 'investment banking,' I guess."

  "My mother does. You're right about the bank being there. My parents split up long ago, though. My father's French, from Martinique, originally, but he lives in Paris, now."

  "Oops," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and directing her attention to the dinghy dock. "Guess we'd better catch up."

  Dani looked around, stunned to discover that the two of them had stopped in the little park while they were talking. Liz and Cynthia were standing on the dinghy dock, chatting as they waited.

  ****

  "I should warn her," Cynthia said to Liz as they watched Dani and Ed.

  "About your father?"

  "Yeah. He's smooth with the ladies. It's like a game with him."

  "She's a big girl," Liz said. "I don't think he'll get very far with her."

  "I hope not, for her sake. He's a real shit where women are concerned. I mean, he's nice to them, but he's like a tomcat; he can't keep it in his pants."

  "Cynthia! You're talking about your father," Liz said, blushing.

  "Well, it's true. He breaks the heart of every woman he takes a fancy to. It's embarrassing to be around him."

  "At least he's not berating you for sneaking off with your boyfriend," Liz said.

  "Oh, he'll get there once we're alone. And he doesn't know for sure where I was. Only that I wasn't with my girlfriend. It's just that he's got his eye on Dani right now. It's a question of priorities for him. He needs to line up his entertainment. Watch yourself; you'll probably be next."

  ****

  As Dani and Ed walked onto the dinghy dock, she saw a man scramble up from a go-fast boat that had pulled in next to where Liz and Cynthia were standing. When he shoved Liz aside and grabbed Cynthia, Dani charged forward. He was pushing the struggling girl toward the waiting boat when Dani brought her fist down on the top of his spine in a hammer blow.

  Stunned, he released Cynthia and whirled to confront Dani, swinging his right fist in a powerful round-house punch. She lurched toward him, stepping inside the punch and trapping his right arm with her left as she drove her right elbow into his throat with enough force to collapse his windpipe. She followed through with a knee to his groin. He gagged and fell backward into the waiting boat, both hands pressed to his throat as he tried to breathe. The boat roared away into the gathering darkness.

  Dani turned to see Liz and Ed helping Cynthia to her feet. "You okay?" she asked.

  "Yes," Cynthia said.

  "Liz?" Dani looked at her friend.

  "I'm fine. He took me by surprise."

  "He won't be grabbing anybody else for a while," Dani said.

  "Thanks to you," Ed said.

  Dani noticed that he was looking at her with a mix of awe and fear, eyes wide and face white. She was disappointed; she realized she'd been enjoying his attention earlier. She knew that most men were put off by women who kicked male ass. "It was just instinct," she said, annoyed to hear an apologetic tone in her voice.

  "I don't think so. You've honed those moves; I've seen boxers that weren't that fast."

  "You box?" Dani asked.

  "I tried, when I was in college, but I didn't have the killer instinct, according to my coach. I got tired of getting my ass kicked in the ring, so I decided to take out my aggression in court."

  Dani nodded.

  "What did they want with Cynthia?" Ed asked, after a moment.

  Dani saw a look of panic flash across the girl's face at his question. She winked at Cynthia and shrugged. "Hard to say. Unprovoked personal attacks are almost unheard of down here. He must have been high on something, or maybe he mistook her for someone else."

  "Shouldn't we call the cops?" Ed asked.

  "Those guys are long-gone. The cops will just tie us up filling out reports and nothing will come of it, but if you want to, we can," she said.

  Ed thought about that for a few seconds and looked at Cynthia, raising his eyebrows.

  "Let's just forget it, Dad. No harm done."

  Chapter 7

  "Want a nightcap?" Liz asked Dani, as she hung the dish towel in its place. Their guests had retired to their cabins half an hour earlier. "I'm not sleepy yet, after that nap this afternoon."

  "I'm not, either," Dani said. "Do we have any of that shrub left?"

  "Sure," Liz said, putting two glasses on a tray. She reached into their liquor locker and extracted a half-empty bottle of Martinique's signature liqueur. Pouring two fingers into each glass, she handed Dani the tray. "I'll join you in the cockpit in a second. I just want to set out the coffee stuff for tomorrow morning."

  Dani was no sooner seated than Liz sat down across from her. She handed Liz a glass and raised her own, extending it toward her friend.

  "Cheers," Liz said, touching her glass to Dani's. She took a sip of the shrub and said, "How are you feeling about our guests, now."

  "He's really handsome, with those dark eyes and the black, curly hair," Dani said.

  Liz hid her smile behind her glass. It was a rare thing for Dani to be so unguarded.

  "His skin's so smooth," Dani continued.

  "Cynthia wanted to warn you about him," Liz said.

  "Why?"

  "She makes him out to be something of a heartbreaker," Liz said, amused to see the flush rise on Dani's cheeks in the moonlight.

  "Um ... why should I care about that? Silly girl; I told you she'd have excess hormones."

  "You're her new role model," Liz said. "She thinks you hung the moon, as the saying goes."

  "She's a nice kid; I didn't expect to like her, but you were right. She's fun to have around. I hope Ed gives her a brea
k on this boyfriend thing."

  "Careful. She pointed out to me that all he really knows for sure is that she wasn't with her girlfriend. Don't slip up and betray her confidence."

  "She's pretty shrewd. I'm not sure I'd have been that self-possessed at her age."

  Liz burst into laughter at that.

  "What?" Dani asked frowning.

  "You, the one who spent her 16th summer as a mercenary in Nicaragua."

  "Don't tell her about that, Liz."

  "Okay, but why not? She'd like that."

  "It might get back to Ed."

  Liz took a sip of her drink and began coughing to cover her laughter. Regaining her composure after a few seconds, she asked, "Now that we have some privacy, what do you really think those two men at the dinghy dock were up to?"

  "I think the Chief Super was right; somebody must be worried about what Cynthia might know," Dani said. "I'll feel better about that once we're somewhere else. We need to talk Ed and Cynthia into getting under way tomorrow, if we can."

  "But the only people she could identify are the taxi driver and the bartender on the ferry," Liz said. "I can't imagine that they're important enough to warrant attacking her. By the way, while Ed was preoccupied with you, I did ask if she recognized either of them. She didn't."

  "What do you mean by that?" Dani asked.

  Liz looked puzzled. "She didn't remember seeing either — "

  "Not that. What you said about Ed. You think he's preoccupied with me?"

  Liz paused before she answered. Could Dani not have noticed? Deciding that her friend's finely honed perception didn't always extend to social encounters, she said, "Yes. He seems smitten by you."

  "Oh," Dani said, a faraway look coming over her face. "Think I'll turn in, now," she said, draining her glass as she stood up.

  ****

  "Kill him," the Dragon Lady said, upon learning of Festus Jacob's failed attempt to kidnap the girl.

  Li Wong nodded, hiding his relief. He had not told her that Jacobs had died on their way back from Bequia, suffocating slowly from the crushed larynx he'd suffered. Wong had ordered the other man with him to dispose of the body, weighting it and dumping it in the deep water off the west coast of St. Vincent.

  "The taxi driver, too," she said

  "Do you wish me to make examples of them?" he asked.

  "No. The one example will be enough; he's the one who could do the most damage, too. Have you found him yet?"

  "Not yet. No one has seen him since the failed raid the other night. The police are looking, too. The Chief Superintendent has already appointed an interim replacement to run the drug squad."

  "Who is it? One of ours?"

  "No, unfortunately. A man called Dawson. Harry Dawson. He's as straight as they come."

  "Find some leverage, Wong. Or we'll have to take him out, somehow."

  Wong nodded. "What about the girl?"

  "What about her?" the Dragon Lady asked.

  "Do you still want her?"

  "Why would I have changed my mind?"

  "Jacobs and the taxi driver are the only ones she can identify," Wong said.

  "What about the bartender from the ferry?" she asked.

  "Williams," Wong said. "Joseph Williams."

  "She saw him, didn't she?" she asked.

  "I assume she did. He — "

  "Kill him."

  "Then she won't be able to identify anyone connected to us," Wong said.

  "And your point is?"

  "She will be no threat to us," Wong said.

  The Dragon Lady paused for a moment, as she thought about letting Wong in on her grand plan. She decided to keep it from him. He would serve her needs well enough if he thought this were a simple kidnapping for ransom. If he fell into Gregorio's hands at some point, Wong might be made to talk. It would be best if he didn't know her ultimate goal.

  "Fool. We don't know how much the taxi driver told her. He's got a reputation for trying to impress the girls, remember. He almost got us in trouble once before. We should have cut our losses then instead of listening to Jacobs. Besides, it's not just that she's a threat. Her father is wealthy; he'll pay to get her back. These people have cost me a great deal of lost business, not to mention the loss of our key contact in the police."

  "But once she's ransomed, she might still lead them to us," Wong said.

  She shook her head, clicking her tongue. "Sometimes you are thick-headed, my little one. Once we have the money, you can make her disappear ... any way that you choose."

  She laughed as his face flushed. "You think I don't know about your peculiar appetites, my little pervert?"

  ****

  James Chelmsford congratulated himself on his foresight. He had known when he started taking payoffs from the Dragon Lady that the sweet arrangement couldn't last. Foresight or not, he had been surprised that his career had ended on such a trivial note. He had expected that he would be discovered in one of the endless investigations that the U.S. DEA precipitated in the islands. Instead, he was a victim of simple miscommunication. In some ways, though, it was a relief that he was finished with the duplicity.

  He had plenty of money in his numbered accounts; he was set for life. He just couldn't live in St. Vincent and the Grenadines any longer, but that was all right, too. Once he got clear of the islands and established a false trail with an interim identity, he thought he'd spend a few months in New York.

  Then there was his place in Rio; he'd set that up years ago. In the longer term, that's where he planned to retire. His immediate problem was to get to Miami and assume his new identity.

  He'd had a bad feeling about this latest venture when he couldn't find that yacht in Admiralty Bay. To a suspicious man like him, that smacked of a setup. When he had called his office yesterday morning at eight o'clock and learned that Rupert Mason had already been through the files on his desk, he had hung up the telephone and grabbed the boogie bag that he kept in the hidden compartment in his closet.

  He'd left his villa by the back door, not even pausing to lock up. He wouldn't be back. He worked his way through the cane fields to the little overgrown bay on the west coast of St. Vincent where he kept his speedboat, tossing his bag aboard as he cut the mooring lines. He fired up the three 300-horsepower outboard engines and roared away, leaving St. Vincent and his troubles in a cloud of spray.

  In a few hours, he tied the boat up to the dock outside the villa that he leased in Antigua. He had spent the rest of the day making reservations under his interim identity, the one supported by the passport and credit cards that he kept in a hidden safe in the villa. Tomorrow, he would enter the U.S. at the airport in San Juan, and from there, he'd fly to Miami, where he would change identities again.

  He would enjoy a few days at South Beach and check out the women at the clubs for a night or two. Then he'd be off to New York. Life wasn't too bad on the run — not if you were prepared, he thought, smiling, as he set the alarm for six a.m. He didn't want to miss his flight.

  Chapter 8

  Marissa Chen sat behind the carved teak desk in her dimly lit office contemplating the recent setbacks to her business. She fingered a favorite bas-relief dragon on the front of the center drawer. She'd brought the desk with her from Hong Kong when the British had allowed their colony to revert to mainland China.

  She had preferred colonial rule; the colonial officials tended to be less committed to enforcing the laws than the Chinese bureaucrats. When her shipments had been seized a second time and she hadn't been able to find anyone to bribe, she had paused her trading while she considered where to relocate. On balance, she was happy with her choice of St. Vincent, another former British colony that was unencumbered by communist zealots and small enough that finding the right officials to bribe was simple.

  In her 15 years here, she had diversified. She ran a vertically integrated business now, growing her own product and controlling its distribution. In the Caribbean countries, she had her own retail distribution channels, althoug
h she still depended on the mob for distribution in her largest market, the U.S.

  While that cut into her profit margins now, she had plans to take over the mob's role in the U.S. market soon. In the meantime, her mob connections offered other benefits. A short phone call to one of her contacts in Miami had yielded a lengthy dossier on this lawyer, Edward Savage. Marissa didn't expect to gain any new information on Savage, but she wanted Jimmy Gregorio, the mob boss in Miami, to know she was asking. She was betting that Gregorio would wonder why, and that would lead him into the trap that she was setting.

  Savage was a multimillionaire, although he lived a modest enough life. Marissa admired that; she abhorred the frivolous display of wealth. It wasn't the way of her people. Money should be invested to make more money; it shouldn't be frittered away on foolish luxuries. Savage's wealth was liquid; most of his millions were in brokerage accounts. He would have no problem raising the money to ransom his daughter.

  She had been relieved to learn that unlike a lot of the lawyers she had encountered, Savage had no underworld connections. His clients were legitimate businesses, publicly traded corporations for the most part, so he wouldn't be able to mobilize a counterattack. His only options would be to pay the ransom or go to the authorities. She smiled at the thought of his going to the authorities in this part of the world. The ones who weren't on her payroll were too disorganized to be a threat to her.

  Her biggest concern was how much ransom she should demand. Savage was a playboy; that was his one weakness. He spent his spare time chasing women. While he didn't neglect his daughter, he didn't appear to be a doting father, either. The Dragon Lady had been surprised over the years at the way some parents reacted to ransom demands, but she thought he would want his daughter back intact. She knew better than to ask too much; protracted haggling could ensue, and that afforded time for things to go wrong. In her grand scheme, the ransom wasn't important except as window dressing.

  She was impatient for Wong to get back from his mission to Antigua so that they could move on the girl.

  ****

  Li Wong waited in the cramped cabin of the go-fast boat. He knew he would miss the fun when the two crooked Antigua cops rousted James Chelmsford, but his appearance was too distinctive for him to risk being seen by people in the neighboring villas.