Sink, Swim, Die

  Sink, Swim, Die

  A Mystery

  Jay Giles

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, places and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual locale, person or event is entirely coincidental.

  Sink, Swim, Die

  (The Bullet-Riddled Yacht Book 2)

  Copyright © 2015 Jay Giles

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. Printed in the United States of America.

  Cover Photo licensed from ThinkStock

  Cover design & illustration by Reagent Press

  Cover illustration copyright © 2015 Reagent Press

  RP BOOKS WASHINGTON

  REAGENT PRESS

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Su groaned. “I told you.”

  To her: “He’s mistaken.” To him: “We’re innocent, the pirates shot them. Surely, that’s obvious.”

  “Leaving you alive and not taking this fancy boat?” He gave me a sly look. “Who you think you’re foolin’?”

  I felt my heartbeat accelerate. My palms were clammy. I wasn’t dealing with reality here. He talked like a TV character; maybe he thought this was how a TV cop would act.

  Holding me in his gaze, he began talking on his cell in Portuguese. Su was taking baby steps backward. I had a feeling she was going for a knife from the galley. Her gaze met mine. I shook my head ever so slightly. She stopped, but the look in her eyes said, “Mistake.”

  Joey finished his call. “No trouble now, guys. It’ll go better that way.”

  He was acting too much like he was in charge—the adult chiding the misbehaving children. Probably got that from a Friend’s episode, too. We needed to put this on an adult-to-adult basis.

  “I’m ready,” I said. “As soon as we’re back at police headquarters, we’ll want to see your supervisor immediately.”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “You’re letting a group of cocaine smugglers get away with two counts of murder, terroristic threatening, assault and battery, and destruction of property. When your supervisor hears how badly you’ve bungled this, you’ll be the joke of the force.”

  He eyed me skeptically. “Says you.”

  “You don’t get it. We can identify who did this—we know what he looks like, we know his name, JaMarcus, and from his accent he has to be Jamaican. Anybody who kills like he did is sure to have a record.” I gave him my sternest look, shook my head. “The American Embassy won’t take kindly to this, either.”

  A little air went out of him.

  “Let’s go,” I urged, taking a step toward the stairs. “Why are we waiting here?”

  “Wait.”

  I thought I saw a little fear in his eyes. “Why?”

  “If what you say is true, why didn’t they take this boat?”

  “Because it’s big and slow. They’ve got smaller, faster boats. Think about it. This boat would only slow them down.”

  “They could sell it,” he sputtered.

  “Good luck with that. A shot-up yacht without any title paperwork? It screams stolen.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” I pressed. “This is pretty straight forward. You arrest us; you look stupid. You go after JaMarcus and you bring a career criminal to justice.” I neglected mentioning JaMarcus was already dead, shot by the lady a few steps to his right. I was guessing JaMarcus might be in the system, whereas a second-in-command like Miguel, might not. “You’ve got some sort of criminal database, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “There are two of them we’ll want to look for, JaMarcus, he’s the leader, and the guy who actually pulled the trigger, Miguel.”

  He huffed and puffed trying to reassert his authority. I stood my ground.

  He caved.

  We rode the skiff back to his cruiser, drove in silence to the station house, and were marched into Missing Ear’s office. Joey replayed what he’d seen and heard. Missing Ear regarded us sourly.

  I had no idea how this was going to go.

  Missing Ear wasn’t quick to let me know, either. He deliberated for what seemed like forever, before issuing a string of commands. Joey snapped to attention and got busy. Arrangements were made for Ollie and Nestor’s bodies to be brought to the morgue, the bullets collected as evidence, and for us to review mug shots. For that, Joey led us to a room with an IBM desktop so old the keyboard was in Greek letters, so slow the pages loaded like they were serving a 20-year sentence.

  For three long, tedious hours, Joey—and at times, Missing Ear—hovered over us as Su and I looked at criminal after criminal.

  JaMarcus’ real name turned out to be George Kennedy. His rap sheet listed: drug possession, intent to distribute, attempted murder, fleeing the scene of an accident, and domestic abuse. I’m sure his mom would say, “George is a good boy.”

  Miguel—his last name was Estrada—was also in the system for drug possession, attempted murder, assault and battery, grand theft, and shoplifting. Miguel’s mother might not have been as kind—he had to have been a terror even at an early age.

  But there was another face I recognized. The guy with the shaved head, big shoulders, and tattoos whose house in Laranjeiras we’d torched. He was Rodrigo Moreno, and his record—murder, kidnapping, assault, grand larceny, smuggling, wire fraud—made JaMarcus and Miguel seem like Boy Scouts.

  I must have spent too much time on him. “You know this goofball?” Joey wanted to know.

  I swiveled in my seat to look up at the two of them. “He tried to steal my boat. What can you tell us about him?”

  Joey and Missing Ear conversed in Portuguese. “He’s a bad dude,” Joey said finally.

  Helpful.

  Still, with JaMarcus and Miguel identified, suspicion of us waned. We were allowed to leave. Su couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Only when we’d walked a block away from the building, did she start to relax. “We got lucky,” she said under her breath. “You frightened them. If you hadn’t, they would have arrested us.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.”

  She shot me a look. “You heard him. ‘Why are you still alive?’ They take that thought and make the facts fit so you are guilty. They don’t care we didn’t do it. They throw us in jail so they look good to their superiors. That’s all they care about.”

  She was being cynical, but she was probably right. I was expecting to be treated the way I would have been in the States. This wasn’t the States. Their turf. Their rules.

  Ahead, I spotted church steeples a block over and steered Su in that direction. The local Catholic Church turned out to be a large stucco building in the Romanesque style with square steeples on either side of the arched front entryway. Inside, we were greeted by Father Dom Carlos, who wore a black short sleeve shirt with the traditional priest’s collar, and stroked a stringy white beard as he explained in halting English that his ministry was part of the
Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church which, led by his namesake, Bishop Dom Carlos Duarte Costa, broke away from Rome in 1945.

  With a shuffling gait, he showed us around the cavernous church. The sound of our voices were magnified by the quiet of the space. Although large, the church was simple and unadorned. There were few statues, little religious iconography. Even the altar was plain. After we returned to the vestibule, he put his hands together in front of him as if he was going to pray. “You wish to bury your friends?”

  “Yes, Father. They were sailors, men of the sea. I don’t know their faith, but they were good men and they deserve a Christian burial.”

  His beard tugging intensified. “I am embarrassed to mention it. We are a poor church—”

  “We would like to make a contribution to have a mass read and pay for the burial.”

  He gave me a beatific smile. “Thank you. As you can see our needs are many.”

  He was right. I could see paint peeling from spots on the ceiling. Some of the panes in the stained glass windows were gone. One of the doors between the vestibule and the nave was off its hinges and leaning against the wall.

  He saw me looking, put his hand respectfully on my arm, and gave me a sad smile. “What’s here is good enough. Our outreach is what worries me. There are parishioners...children...without food, medicine. I see the suffering, I do what I can, but the need is great.”

  “We’ll help,” I assured him, even though we’d burned through almost all the 15K.

  He told me he’d say the burial mass at noon, two days from then. I promised I’d have Ollie and Nestor there. “Pall bearers?” He asked.

  I shook my head, “There’s just us. Ollie was a big man, too.”

  “Not to worry. Men from the congregation will help,” he offered and patted me on the shoulder. “It will be a beautiful mass.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I said as he walked us to the door. Outside, I used the sat phone to call Sloane. To my surprise, he picked up.

  “What’s happening?” He demanded curtly.

  I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed with me, concerned about me, or just in one of his bitchy moods. Didn’t matter. I told him the events surrounding the two deaths. He was, in turn, shocked, outraged, and incensed. He vented about the unfairness of it all then chastised me for moving too slowly. “I expected the Venetian here a week ago, Will.” It was almost as if he was picking a fight.

  If that’s what it was, I didn’t rise to the bait. “From here, we’ll make the jump across the Gulf. So we’ll be there shortly, but first, I’m going to need some money—”

  “What about that money I gave you?”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Use that credit card.”

  “I will. But I need to make a donation to this priest who’s handling the burial.”

  “I don’t see why I should be expected to pay for that,” he groused. “What about their families? What ab—”

  “There’s nobody, Ban. These guys died trying to get your boat to you. We’ve got a responsibility to take care of them. I’ve made the arrangements, but I need to pay the church. Surely you understand that?”

  Silence. I could picture him seething, thinking: They’re independent contractors, they should pay for their own funerals. “How much?” He asked coldly.

  “I’m thinking two thousand dollars.”

  “Ridiculous,” he exploded, “absolutely ridiculous. I’m not paying that. If you want to pay that, it comes out of your money. You’re stretching my patience, Will. I want that boat here in a week, understood?”

  Maybe I understood, maybe I didn’t. He’d never know. He’d already rung off.

  Su looked at me. “So what now?”

  “Let’s go find a bank. I’ll get my office to wire the money.” On the way, I called LeeAnn. “How much have we got in the firm’s checking account?” I asked when she picked up.

  “Well, hello to you, too, darlin’. Should I be worried? You needin’ to raid the company piggy bank and all.”

  I let her know about Ollie and Nestor’s deaths. Skinflint’s refusal to pay for the funerals.

  “Sorry about your friends, Will,” she said as we walked into a bank. “But you know why Sloane doesn’t want to pay. It’s because he’s the devil.”

  “He arrogant, self-centered, totally narcissistic,” I agreed as I headed over to what looked like the bank manager’s desk. “But not the devil.”

  “That man has horns and a long pointed tail. That’s all I’m sayin’.” I heard her hitting keys on a keyboard. “Here it is. You’ve got twenty-four thousand and change, less my salary for—when are you going to get back here and generate some income?”

  “Two weeks,” I told her. “I’ll be home in two weeks.”

  “I’m not believing a word of that, so let’s say you’ve got twelve thousand you can play with.”

  “Perfect, I’m going to hand the phone to a nice banker lady,” I nodded to the dark-haired woman with dangly gold hoop earrings and a red scarf tied around her neck sitting across the desk from me. “I want you to wire her ten thousand. She’ll give you the wire transfer numbers.” I handed the phone to the banker who did just that. Thirty minutes later, we walked out with a check made out to Father Dom.

  “I’m hungry,” Su said as we left the bank. “We should get some dinner.” She looked over at me. “You have to be starved.”

  Now that she mentioned it, I was, too. “Let’s deliver this check, while we’re close by, then we’ll get something.”

  Fortunately, we found Father Dom in the vestibule. We waited respectfully a short distance away while he talked with an older woman wearing a worn green dress and holding a Rosary in her hands. When they finished, Father saw us, gave a small wave of his hand. He walked over, stroking his beard, a quizzical look on his face. “Mr. Taggert, Ms. Li, I didn’t expected to see you again so soon.”

  “I didn’t want to wait to give you this.” I handed him the check.

  He took it, glanced at it quickly, did a double take as his gaze registered the number of zeros. “A miracle,” he gushed and started to cry. “You don’t know how much this means.” He hugged each of us, sobbing on my shoulder until he regained his composure. “Just a moment. Stay here. Don’t leave.” He shuffled off and was gone for more than ten minutes.

  “Think he’s booking a flight to Cancun?” Su wondered, breaking the tension.

  He returned with a broad smile on his face. “Consider these an inadequate thank you.” He handed Su a small pin with the image of the Holy Mother.

  She looked contrite, probably regretting her Cancun crack. “Thank you, Father,” she said humbly.

  To me, he held-up a holy medal, about the size of an American quarter, on a silver chain. “This is our Patron Saint—Our Lady of Aparecida—it was blessed by Pope Pius X in 1904 when he visited San Paulo.” He took my hand, placed it in my palm, and closed my hand over it. “I want you to have it. Wear it always and it will protect you.”

  I was touched by his generosity. “Father, I can’t accept this. You’re kind to offer, but it’s something you should keep.”

  He started crying again. “Please. Please. Accept it with my blessing.”

  Refusing again might offend him and I didn’t want that. “I’d be honored. Thank you, Father.” I put the medal around my neck.

  His face lit-up in a smile. “Now I’m crying tears of joy,” he said and hugged each of us again.

  Maybe the medal was working its magic. As we walked down a narrow street of shops and cafes toward the harbor, I felt more at peace than I had since this vacation slash nightmare started.

  Su grabbed my arm, stopping me. She was looking at a menu posted by the door of a restaurant with red and white striped awnings over its front windows. She shook her head. “Too much fried stuff. We keep looking.”

  Our second stop had alfresco dinning. Four tables with blue umbrellas dotted the narrow sidewalk. Su got a menu from a waiter, studied it for a moment. The pl
ace looked good to me but she handed the menu back to him. “Too pricey.”

  We had to cross the street for place three, navigating cars and bikes. This place had sliding doors that were open revealing a black and white check floor, series of round tables with white tablecloths, and an old-fashioned bar and back bar on the right side of the room.

  My nose liked this one. It was the smell of freshly baked bread and something else. Something I couldn’t quite place. I took a deep breath. Chocolate. I walked in and sat down at a table near the front. Su was still standing on the sidewalk, looking at the menu. I waved her over.

  “Smell that bread,” I said when she was seated at the table. “This is the place.”

  She laughed at me. “That’s it. You choose by smell?”

  “Smell is an underappreciated part of selecting a dining establishment,” I said seriously. “Think of it as sniffing the cork on a fine wine.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe you have brain cells die because you haven’t eaten in so long.”

  Our waiter—a tall young kid with slicked-back black hair, a pointed nose, and highly polished black pointy-toe shoes—appeared. A narrow white apron tied tight around his skinny middle.

  He spoke in Portuguese; Su translated. “He wants to know what we want to drink.” She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Bottle of wine?”

  “Sure.”

  They spoke at length. Something was finally decided. He strode off, returning with two long-stemmed round-bodied wine glasses.

  “He said the fish is very good, tonight. So we’re getting a local white. He says it’s very dry with a great bouquet.”

  I was more interested in the food. “So we’re having fish?”

  “Yes, with rice and broccoli. Very healthy.”

  “Take a deep breath,” I told her.

  She did.

  “What do you smell?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “Bread?”