Caribbean Hustle (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
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“No I’m not,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”
Teffinger shook his head.
“Out of the question.”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” she said. “Maybe it is his eyes that I see out of. If that’s true, I might get a flash. It might save your life.”
“I don’t care about my life all that much.”
“Well, then you’re alone in that regard. I’m coming with you. You can either take me or I’ll go there on my own. I know where it’s at, remember? Either way, I’m going.”
Two minutes later Teffinger stepped into the shower, got the water as hot as he could stand it and let the questions bounce in his brain. One grew larger than the others.
Was Kovi-Ke going to kill him tonight?
13
Day Two
June 5
Thursday Night
After dark Teffinger parked the Tundra a quarter mile away from Tarzan’s lair and stepped out into a black, nasty storm. Lightning arced across an evil sky, strobe-lighting eerie industrial silhouettes. He hunched against the weather, already soaked. The beers that tasted so good earlier in the evening now sat dull and dead in his gut. His body ached. His eyes wanted to close and stay that way for the rest of his life.
He fought through it all.
At the building he entered through the same place as this afternoon, then climbed the stairs in the dark without a flashlight to the top floor, made his way to the far corner and slumped down.
He was alone.
Kovi-Ke wasn’t with him.
He wasn’t about to bring a civilian into a potentially dangerous situation.
The corner felt good.
It was safe.
The radiant warmth of the day still resonated there.
Tarzan was a ladies’ man. He could charm a woman even as strong and exotic as Kovi-Ke. Plus they’d both arrived in Denver at the same time, give or take. Because of that alone, Teffinger couldn’t discount that maybe the two of them were in some kind of a conspiracy. But if so, to do what?
To kill him?
He shook his head.
Why was he always jumping to the worst-case scenario? Why was he hell-bent on believing Kovi-Ke was out to get him? Sure, he had facts that pointed that way, but in his gut he couldn’t deny that something deeper was at work.
He could love her.
He could do it completely and absolutely.
That scared him.
He’d be vulnerable.
A sound came, barely audible over the storm but something out of step with the rest of the night, something that didn’t belong, maybe something innocent from the rail yard but just as easily maybe something more sinister. He held his breath and focused.
It didn’t reappear, not in five seconds or ten or a full minute.
He couldn’t make it come back.
Devil of death.
Kovi-Ke’s words hadn’t left Teffinger’s brain, not once since she uttered them; not because they were so strangely poetic but because they represented a theory that might actually be in play. It was possible that the curse—to the extent there really was one—was on the man instead of Kovi-Ke. Either way, whoever put the curse into motion knew who the man was. Whoever orchestrated the night of voodoo knew who the man was.
Wait a minute, maybe he didn’t.
Maybe he or she or they knew of the man but didn’t know his exact identity. Maybe that’s why they brought Kovi-Ke into the mix, to find out who he was.
Still, they had some kind of connection to him.
They had pieces of the puzzle.
Teffinger checked his watch, added two hours and concluded that the FBI profiler, Dr. Leigh Sandt, had long since gone to bed.
He called her anyway.
“I know I’m waking you up and I’m going to hell for it,” he said.
“Teffinger?”
“I need to know something. Do we have any people in Haiti that I can tap?”
“If you mean FBI, no.”
“How about CIA?”
“I’m sure there’s CIA there but that’s not my circle.”
“Can you get me a name and number?”
“God, Teffinger—”
Suddenly a noise came from down below, somewhere inside the building. Teffinger killed the power on the phone, stood up and drew his gun.
Then he stood perfectly still.
14
Day Two
June 5
Thursday Night
The beam of a flashlight bounced off the walls, making its way up the final stairs and into the room. Teffinger’s heart raced.
“Teffinger!”
The voice wasn’t rough.
It was Jamaican.
“Over here,” he said.
The light shined on him, then dropped out of his eyes and onto the floor as it made its way over. Then it went out. Kovi-Ke wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, “Looks like I was telling the truth about coming.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Teffinger said. “Now I have to abort.”
“Go ahead but I’m staying here.”
Teffinger exhaled.
“This isn’t a game.”
She held her arms out and said, “Search me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have a gun, I don’t have a knife, I don’t even have a paperclip,” she said.
“Why would I care?”
“We both know why. Do it.”
He did it, running his hands over her body, at first all business, then more personal, more private, more in a way that made her spread her legs ever so slightly.
“I’m not in town to kill you,” she said. “Get used to the idea.”
“I never said you were.”
“You thought it.” A beat then, “I made love to you this morning, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed.”
“So what’d you think, that that was some kind of a black widow thing?”
“No.”
“Don’t be afraid of me,” she said. “It hurts me when you are.”
Teffinger wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight. Her chest beat against his, the wetness of her clothes felt like a thousand ancient genes running through his blood.
He kissed her.
It was wrong.
The timing was bad.
He didn’t care.
She kissed him back, deeper, longer, suddenly an animal, not to be denied for even a second longer. She ripped his shirt open, then her own, and pressed her breasts against him.
The storm pounded down with an aching fury.
Lightning flashed.
Every molecule in Teffinger’s brain exploded.
He dropped to his knees and yanked down her shorts.
Then a sound came, not from them, from below, somewhere down in the guts of the building, a sound that could have been a crowbar or piece of rebar dropping to the floor.
He froze.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
He pulled his gun and said, “Stay here. Don’t move from this spot. I need to know exactly where you are. Tell me!”
“I’ll stay here.”
He kissed her, made his way to the stairs and headed down on slow cat feet.
His heart pounded.
Tarzan could kill him in a fair fight.
It couldn’t get to that point.
Not for a second.
The third floor was blacker than black when he got to it. Unlike the top floor, the windows were minimal. The thickness of the storm beat away the few lights that otherwise could have shined in from the rail yard. He might as well have been a hundred miles under the ground in a locked vault.
No sounds came.
No flashlights flickered.
He headed lower, to the second floor.
It was a repeat, dark and lifeless.
He descended to the ground floor.
It was another repeat.
&nb
sp; Then suddenly a window shattered, from an outside rock or chunk of asphalt that bounced across the floor and skidded to a stop. Teffinger carefully made his way over and peered out.
Thirty yards away, by the black silhouette of a railcar, a flashlight turned on and pointed directly at him. It flicked back and forth, almost as if daring him to come out and see who was behind it.
The space between the building and flashlight was open.
There were no poles or dumpsters.
He’d be exposed.
What to do?
Go out the back and circle around?
Then something happened he didn’t expect. A voice shouted over the storm, “See you soon, Teffinger!”
He knew that voice.
He knew it only too well.
“Tarzan!”
“Tell me something. That island girl you’re screwing, is she as good as she looks?”
“Tarzan!”
No reply came.
“Tarzan!”
15
Day Two
June 5
Thursday Night
Tarzan was gone, not to return, not tonight at least. Teffinger made his way through the storm to the Tundra with his left arm wrapped around Kovi-Ke’s waist and the cold steel of his weapon gripped in his right hand.
Twenty minutes later they were home.
There he swallowed a beer, called in the incident to dispatch and made sure a renewed BOLO was put out on Tarzan. Tomorrow he’d go back to the lair to try to figure out if Tarzan had beaten him there and already extracted whatever it was he came back for.
But why was he screwing with Teffinger?
Why did he call him?
Why did he taunt him with the flashlight?
Was it all a sick little foreplay to Teffinger’s murder?
He was on the couch in the dark with the lights out and the storm beating every structure and road and car and streetlight and stray dog with evil fists, waiting for Tarzan to make another move, although it would be a long shot tonight. Kovi-Ke was next to him, her soaking clothes replaced with a long-sleeve shirt out of Teffinger’s closet. Underneath it was nothing except her. A glass of white perched in her lap.
Teffinger hardened his heart to be able to get through the next few minutes, which needed to be gotten through. “Island girl,” he said. “That’s what Tarzan called you.”
“Yes.”
“He knows you. He wouldn’t say island unless he knew you were from one. That’s not the kind of word that just pops into a sentence by accident.”
“So, he knows me.”
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s not his eyes I see out of.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know, I just do. He’s probably been stalking you. That’s how he’s seen me. Maybe he got close enough to hear my voice.”
Teffinger chewed on it.
He shook his head.
“No, no way.”
“Maybe you weren’t there,” she said. “Maybe I was talking to someone else.”
She suddenly got very still.
“What’s wrong?” Teffinger said.
“He was there!”
“Where?”
“Up on the top floor, somewhere in the dark. We weren’t alone. He was there with us. He was right there! I had a creepy feeling. I thought it was just the storm and the whole weirdness of the place. But that’s what it was. He was there.”
Teffinger couldn’t deny the possibility.
He hadn’t brought a flashlight.
He’d never searched the place.
“If that was the case, why wouldn’t he just take me out?”
“I don’t know. Probably for the same reason he didn’t take you out when he lured you down to the first floor. Whatever he’s up to, it’s not time yet.”
Teffinger went to the window, drew the curtain ever so slightly and peeked out. Nothing was out there, only the storm.
Tarzan knew Kovi-Ke.
Did she know him, in spite of denying it?
Teffinger wasn’t sure.
He still couldn’t read her good enough.
He curled up on the couch with his head on the woman’s lap.
His eyes closed.
If she killed him while he was sleeping, he didn’t care.
He was too tired to care.
16
Day Three
June 6
Friday Morning
Teffinger woke just before the first rays of dawn Friday morning. No one had killed him during the night; not Tarzan, not Kovi-Ke, not Tarzan and Kovi-Ke in combination, not the crazy neighbor from down the street, not a 747 dropping out of the sky, no one. Right now, the way he felt, that was a good thing. Last night he didn’t really care. Now he did.
He was on the couch with a pillow under his head.
He rocked to an upright position and headed to the bedroom to find Kovi-Ke sleeping on top of the sheets, still wearing his shirt, although now it had ridden up to her waist. He covered her with a blanket, gave her a soft kiss on the cheek and headed outside into the dark for a jog, making sure the door was solidly locked behind him.
Puddles were rampant and the air smelled like wet grass but the storm was gone.
Houses were dark.
Teffinger’s body wasn’t in the best of moods for a jog but that was too bad. It would need to comply. He put one foot in front of the other with a rhythm and let the streetlights click off. A dog behind a fence snapped off a half dozen warning barks as he passed. Something crossed the street up ahead, a cat or a fox, pausing briefly to size Teffinger up before it darted into the shadows and became forever gone.
Whatever it was it had survived the night.
Good job.
He picked up the pace; getting his knees higher and his stride longer and letting his lungs hunt deeper for air. The road went from downhill to flat to now slightly up, hardly up at all actually, but a strong anchor nonetheless. Teffinger forced his body to keep the speed up.
Kovi-Ke.
Kovi-Ke.
Kovi-Ke.
Who was she, really?
He got home half an hour later, three well-earned miles under the belt, to find the coffee pot warming up and the exotic little flower that was Kovi-Ke in the shower.
He stepped in, took the soap and worked it on her back, saying nothing.
Her hair was heavy with water.
Rogue strands danced back and forth on her neck from the spray.
Teffinger had never seen anything so pure and natural.
He kissed her there.
Everything in his world shifted; how big and how far, he wasn’t sure yet—but a shift had come.
He whispered in her ear, “Tell me about the other murders.”
“What do I get in return?”
“Whatever you want.”
“What if what I want is you?”
“Then that’s what you get,” he said.
“Deal,” she said. “Payment first.”
“Now?”
She rubbed against him.
“Absolutely now.”
He paid, and then over pancakes and coffee, she kept up her end. “Like I said before, I’ve never seen him actually kill anyone. All I’ve seen is the aftermath. The most disturbing one was the one I already told you about, the stomach girl.”
“Alley Savannah.”
“If that’s her name.”
“She was last seen at a lesbian club.”
“Yeah, you told me.” Teffinger must have had a look on his face because the woman added, “I’ve had women, if that’s what your thinking.”
Teffinger took a long slurp.
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“Yes it was. That’s okay. I’d be doing the same.”
He took a noisy slurp of coffee.
“So you’re bi?”
“I’m whatever I want to be at the moment. Lif
e’s too short to not take it, wherever it is.” She smiled. “Do you have any lesbian girlfriends? You could bring her over and watch.”
He pictured it.
“You’re picturing it,” she said.
He nodded.
“It’s nice. Have you ever been to Miami?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever been to the club Alley Savannah was at? The Blackbird Ordinary?”
She hesitated and then said, “Yes.”
The word was a train slamming into Teffinger’s chest.
“You have?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about that before?”
“Because then you’d be focusing on me,” she said. “I don’t want you focusing on me. I want you focusing on the guy whose eyes I’m seeing out of. That’s who killed her, not me.”
“But you were there, at the club?”
“Once or twice but not that night or even that month. Like I said, I didn’t kill her.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
“Did you see her there at the club when you were there?”
“If I did, I don’t remember her.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember leaving with a curvy little blond,” she said.
“Do you remember her name?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
She hardened her face.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you anything. I gave you my body—twice—and you still don’t trust me?”
“I trust you just fine,” he said.
She dropped her fork and stood up.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You contact me when that’s actually true.”
Then she was gone, out the door and gone, walking down the street and gone, leaving with a brisk stride and gone, all as Teffinger watched. His instinct was to chase her down.
He didn’t.
He let her go.
It felt as if his arm had just fallen off.
At the office, Teffinger pulled Sydney into a private room and told her everything that was going on. She wasn’t happy and wrinkled her face to prove it.